


Spring Seeds

by Wyverness



Series: Gifts of the Valley [1]
Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Chronic Illness, Elemental Magic, Grief/Mourning, Memory Loss, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Social Anxiety
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:07:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 36
Words: 56,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27662461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wyverness/pseuds/Wyverness
Summary: Roommates Trisha, Neel, and Brandy each have their own reasons to abandon the big city for the farm Trisha inherited from her grandfather. The valley seems like the answer to their prayers, but beneath the idyllic surface lie dangerous secrets.Trisha loved her job as an analyst for Joja—until it began damaging her health. Farming looks like the perfect response to her doctor's prescription for more time outdoors. An eccentric writer adopts her as his muse, but is there more to his interest? And her life is weird enough without the local "wizard" claiming she is one, too.Neel, reeling over his brother's death in the war, trades the mind-numbing routine of his old job for the physical exhaustion of farm work. A local programmer might be able to help him uncover the local JojaMart's shady secrets, if he can get past the other man's hostility.Brandy is an adrenaline junkie, but when a stunt calls too much attention to her, she needs to lie low for a while. She expects to be bored out of her mind in quiet Pelican Town, but that was before she meets a kindred spirit obsessed with the mysterious, monster-infested mines.Updates Tuesdays and Fridays. Not related to my Stardew Valley: New Horizons series.
Relationships: Abigail & Sam & Sebastian (Stardew Valley), Abigail/Female Player (Stardew Valley), Elliott & Leah (Stardew Valley), Elliott/Female Player (Stardew Valley), Sebastian/Male Player (Stardew Valley)
Series: Gifts of the Valley [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2022676
Comments: 58
Kudos: 57





	1. 18 Fall Y0 - Trisha

**Author's Note:**

> Tags applied to the work are ones that are major elements of the entire story; some chapters will have specific content notes/warnings called out in the chapter notes.

Trisha Curtis eyed the bottom corner of her computer screen, willing the minutes to tick away faster. It didn’t work, but it was a _different_ set of numbers from the ones she was shoving around in her spreadsheets. She sighed and fixed a few errors in the formulas she’d been sent, then spot-checked the results. The new figures still didn’t make sense, but now in the familiar way that meant she hadn’t been given enough data to see the full picture, rather than because sales and revenue had been orders of magnitude outside the expected bounds.

She jumped as her computer beeped at her; she had managed to distract herself from the clock, and the alert for her lunch break was a welcome reprieve. She grabbed her water bottle and purse and shoved her chair back from the desk, pausing only long enough to save the file and lock her computer.

“Hey, Trish, it’s not noon yet—where are you going?” one of her cubicle neighbors called as she passed.

“Early break,” she said, not slowing her steps. “Got a meeting at noon.” The team from the Port Ava satellite office had wanted an all-day meeting, lunch included, and had only reluctantly compromised on two half-days. As she waited by the elevator, foot tapping in time with the numbers counting down above the doors, she reflected that Joja might seem like a giant, faceless corporation to outsiders, but at least she could count on HR having her back.

One express trip to the top floor later, she swiped her badge at a door labeled “Roof Access.” She paused in the stairwell to strip down to the sports bra and bike shorts she wore under her business suit, hanging the rest of her clothes neatly on the hooks Maintenance had installed for her, then pushed open the final door.

The sky was clear today, and sunlight poured over her, even as the cool fall breeze raised goosebumps across her exposed skin. She dashed across the rooftop to where the fans from the server rooms blew a constant stream of warm air, making even the coldest winter days tolerable, and unrolled the yoga mat stored against the wall.

This, too, had been a compromise HR had worked out for her. JojaCorp’s headquarters might be the tallest building in Zuzu City, but helicopter tourism was on the rise, and there were planes coming in and out of the nearest airport to consider, as well; surreptitious photos of a young woman lounging on the roof in a bikini were not the sort of PR her employer wanted. She stretched her arms to the sky before bringing them down in front of her, palms together, as she raised one foot against her other leg, just above the knee. An employee taking advantage of her lunch break to do yoga—in Joja-branded exercise gear, naturally—was an image they could live with.

Trisha could live with it, as well, since her doctor was always going on about how beneficial moderate physical activity was for her condition. She closed her eyes as she held the pose, angled to put as much of her skin as possible in the light. The eye-searing green yoga mat wouldn’t have been her first choice—or Joja’s, since it didn’t fit their corporate color scheme and lacked their logo—but if some high-flying voyeur were to photograph her, it would explain away the green tint to her skin.

A sound cut through her concentration, and she opened her eyes. That hadn’t sounded like one of the birds that sometimes kept her company, and part of the arrangement was that no one did scheduled maintenance up here during her lunch break. Had someone gotten their wires crossed due to her schedule change, or was there an actual emergency?

“Oops,” an electronically modulated voice said. “You’re early.”

Trisha had just enough time to take in the tall figure perched on the safety rail, covered head to toe in a neon orange bodysuit and parachute gear, before the person leapt off of the roof with a whoop of glee that, despite being distorted by both voice-altering device and Doppler effect, sounded far too much like one of her roommates to be coincidence.

She ran to the railing and sagged against it in relief as the parachute opened and probably-Brandy swung away from the skyscraper. Her relief gave way to a groan as she realized the ‘chute—which was bound to be on every network that night, since she could make out the news vans on the street even from this height—was emblazoned with one of the anti-corporate hashtags her nosy cubicle neighbor was in charge of monitoring.

#WhatIsJojaHiding?

“No, I have no idea who it was, officer,” Trisha said—again—nearly an hour later, clutching the borrowed coat around her. The forensics team was still going over the stairwell, and they insisted they couldn’t let her retrieve her clothing until they could be certain they hadn’t missed any traces of the intruder. “I only saw them for a few seconds before they went over the edge.”

“You said the intruder spoke to you,” the man said gently. “You didn’t recognize the voice? Did you get any hint of their gender? What did they say?”

“It sounded like a voice changer—electronic, not human at all,” she said. “I’m pretty sure they said ‘Oops,’ when they spotted me, but after that I couldn’t make anything out clearly over the fans.”

“And what were you doing on the roof, Ms Curtis?” the officer inquired.

She looked pointedly at the eyesore mat, now rolled up and stowed against the air returns. “Yoga.”

“On the roof, in this weather?” His eyebrows had risen high enough to vanish beneath his cap.

“Ms Curtis has permission—” the Joja HR rep who had accompanied the police to the roof began, but Trisha interrupted Clarissa with a small headshake. “I have a medical condition,” she said softly. “The main treatment is light therapy, and my doctor has found that natural light is most effective. Exercise helps, too, so my employer has been kind to let me use this space during my lunch break.” Which was over, but the meeting would have to begin without her, since she was stuck up here answering questions and hoping no one noticed her evasions. “It’s plenty warm over by the fans—even when it’s snowing, the flakes get blown away before they can settle.” It was still warm enough for her, despite the fact they were standing several feet away from her usual workout zone, but much as she longed to throw off the stifling coat, she didn’t think the officer would understand. She shifted a little, trying to angle her face toward the sun without being obvious about it. “Though I don’t come out when it’s raining.” She would—a little water had never hurt her—but on a heavily overcast day the light was thin enough that it wasn’t worth the bother, not when she would have to spend half her break drying her hair.

The officer’s eyes narrowed as he looked at her, perhaps finally realizing that her unusual appearance wasn’t due to the chill. “What sort of medi—”

“That is not relevant to the case at hand, sir,” her HR rep said sharply. “Ms Curtis is a highly valued JojaCorp employee, and while we regret the terrible shock she has been through today, it’s lucky for the investigation that she was present to witness this incident.”

The officer looked less than convinced, but at that moment one of the forensics people came up to them. “It doesn’t look like the intruder came in that way,” she said, glancing at Trisha—and then doing a double-take that the young woman was depressingly familiar with. “Are you all right? The jumper took off running and vanished, so they obviously weren’t injured—”

 _Not until I get my hands on her, anyway_ , Trisha thought, but all she said was, “Does that mean I can get dressed? I was supposed to be at a meeting half an hour ago.”

“The meeting has been rescheduled for tomorrow,” Clarissa said. “All day, I’m afraid, but that was the only thing that could be worked out on such short notice. However, I see no reason for us to continue standing out here in the cold if the stairwell has been cleared.”

Trisha bit back a groan at the news about the meeting, but one day of missing her roof time wouldn’t hurt her too badly. As she traded the borrowed coat for her suit—both her escorts turning their backs, which was ridiculous since she was already dressed enough for public decency—she rehearsed exactly how she was going to chew out her roommate.


	2. 18 Fall Y0 - Elliott

Elliott Carmichael shoved his hair back from his face and glared at the paper in front of him; it remained stubbornly blank. With a sigh, he pushed his chair back from the desk and stood. He paused by the door to pull on a burgundy wool blazer and check his reflection, then stepped outside.

He needn’t have bothered with the mirror; the beach was empty, the chill, damp breeze blowing off of the ocean no doubt having something to do with that. He wandered toward the pier, thinking to bounce a few ideas off of Willy. He suspected the fisherman only humored his frequent visits—his suggestions inevitably involved adding seafood, regardless of what sort of scene Elliott was stuck on—but in rejecting the ridiculous, he was sometimes able to come up with a solution of his own.

Today, however, he would have no such luck. A note on the door reminded him that the shop was closed, the grizzled seafarer plying the oceans until the Spring winds returned him to the valley. _I had meant to wish him bon voyage. Ah, well._ Willy surely knew him well enough by now to forgive the lapse. He leaned against a post on the dock, watching the seagulls bob in the waves. Perhaps he could tell his literary woes to them; as fond as he was of his landlord, he suspected the birds’ replies would have as much relevance. “So, Commander Yutkin needs to find out about his executive officer’s treachery, but none of the people whom I might bring in to inadvertently drop him a clue would have a reason to speak to him right now,” he said, feeling a little foolish, but he was beginning to despair of untangling the snarls of his plot.

With indignant cries, the birds took off, leaving him alone on the beach.

“That was rude,” he said, but he couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his mouth. How absurd he had become, trying to draft the local wildlife to play sounding board. He stared out over the waves until the chill began to steal through his clothing, then retreated to his present abode.

The wind had made his long hair into as much of a mess as his novel, and he went to work on it with a brush as soon as he was safely inside. The shack might not look like much from the outside, but it had proven well insulated—so far. He hoped he would not regret this impulsive decision of his, come the winter.

His notebook, left open, stared accusingly at him from across the room, but he sat down at the piano, instead, and raised the cover over the age-yellowed keys. Its presence had been the deciding factor in his choice of rentals.

Even the muse of music, whoever she might be, had abandoned him today, he thought, wincing as his fingers found yet another wrong note. The instrument let out an even more dissonant clamor as he buried his face in his hands, his elbows coming down on the keys. _This was a mistake. Why did I think I could do this?_ He rose from the bench, running his fingers across the keys, too lightly to draw a sound from them—silent apology for his errors, musical and otherwise—before lowering the fallboard.

Leah would tell him that he had simply gone too long without speaking to a person not residing inside his own skull. Perhaps he ought to make the long hike out to her cabin. He consulted the mirror once again, making sure his hair was properly arranged before setting out for the town. On the bridge across the estuary river, however, his steps slowed. Pelican Town was truly picturesque—he had been leaning toward it over Grampleton even before he saw the piano in the seaside cabin—and he contemplated abandoning his current draft and starting over. Surely a romance set in a tiny hamlet like this one could not go as badly awry as a tale of interstellar intrigue. He watched the dance of sunlight on the rippling water and turned the idea over in his mind.

_A small cast of characters ... a romance requires two, plus there must be some sort of rival. An outside obstacle, too—families that do not care for one another, perhaps? A long-buried secret that will, when it comes to light, lead one of the lovers to forsake the other, until it turns out that the truth was not what either had thought? Or—ah, yes, the cozy mystery genre is always popular, I could combine that with the romance ..._

Peals of laughter interrupted his thoughts; the village children thundered by, playing out some fantastical drama of their own, judging by the paper-and-crayon crown that adorned the boy’s head, and the stick-turned-sword wielded by the girl. _I could draw upon one of the old legends, a retelling for the modern age—_

The children’s long-suffering tutor jogged after her charges, sparing him a shy nod as she passed the bridge. Elliott returned the nod and then rubbed a hand over his face. His “simple” idea was spiraling out of control before he had even set pen to paper. Best to finish what he had already started, no matter how much of a tangled mess he wound up with.

As he trudged back home, his cell phone began to ring. He glanced at the screen and, with a silent prayer to Yoba, answered it. “Hello, Mother.”

“Hello, dear. Do you know what day it is?”

He frowned. He was very tired of these constant tests. “Thursday.”

“Mm-hmm. Could you be more specific?”

He reached the cabin, but leaned against the wall instead of retreating inside where the cell signal was weaker, tempting as it was to “accidentally” let the call drop. “The eighteenth of Fall,” he said—then winced. “Ah, shit. It’s Esther’s birthday.”

The good people of Pelican Town would have been startled by the abrupt shift in his tone, let alone the vulgarity, but his mother only gave a long-suffering sigh.


	3. 18 Fall Y0 - Brandy

Brandy Hudson, legend in the making, froze in the doorway of her apartment at the sight of her roommates sitting side-by-each on the couch, wearing identical looks of annoyance. “Uh, and good evening to you, too,” she said, trying to recapture her nonchalance as she hung her jacket on the coat tree. “What, are you my parents now? Did I stay out past curfew?”

“Since you weren’t here at all last night, that’s as good a place as any to start,” said Trisha.

Neel kept his mouth shut, but his glare was the most genuine emotion Brandy had seen him display in over a year, and it was a struggle to keep from showing how much that cheered her. She stuck her tongue out at their other roommate, instead. “That was a joke, Trish. You are _not_ my mother—I’m older than you, for Yoba’s sake.”

Neel muttered something to the effect of her not acting like it, but Trisha had already resumed her lecture. “You cost me most of my sun break, answering questions about your reckless stunt,” she said. “And I’m going to be stuck inside all day tomorrow at the stupid meeting that was supposed to start today. Do you know how hard it was for HR to get the Port Ava team to agree to half-days to begin with?”

Brandy winced. “Is that why you were—” She smiled brightly. “I mean, what are you talking about? You know all my stunts are carefully planned and executed, so if someone pulled an ‘reckless’ stunt, clearly it wasn’t me.”

“Cut the crap,” Trisha said. “You know we won’t breathe a word of it, but that was you. What were you thinking? What if they figure out you used what I’ve told you to get access to the roof?”

“I’m thinking that once the statute of limitations runs out on trespassing, I’m going to be a BASE jumping _legend_ ,” she said, dropping sideways across the armchair. “A perfect jump from Joja Tower!” She closed her eyes and recalled the rush of air and adrenaline as she had leapt, the snap of her ‘chute opening. Those few seconds had more than made up for the long, cold night on the rooftop, and the frantic scramble on the ground as her “team” whisked her away from the landing zone before the police could reach her. “And I didn’t use your intel, aside from trying to time it for when you wouldn’t be there.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Brandy only yawned and straightened in the chair. “Better you don’t know, sweetie. Oof, love the rush, hate the adrenaline crash. I’m going to bed.”

“Unbelievable,” Trisha muttered, but she didn’t try to stop her from beating a hasty escape to her room. Brandy closed the door behind her and leaned against it, another grin overtaking her face as she recalled her friend’s stunned expression when she had spotted her on the roof rail. That hadn’t been part of the plan, but on the whole she thought her roommate’s unexpected presence would do more to relieve suspicion against her than raise it. She arched her back, trying to work out the last of the stiffness from sleeping on the hard rooftop the night before. She wasn’t sure how she felt about working with a “sponsor,” so to speak, but she had to admit she couldn’t have pulled it off without them.

A tap at the door startled her out of her musings. The mood Trisha was in, she’d be pounding on the door if she’d decided Brandy needed additional chewing out, so she wasn’t surprised to open it and find Neel on the other side. What did shock her was the burning intensity in his dark eyes. The last year had been like living with an animated bronze statue of her childhood friend, going through the motions of life without quite touching the reality of it, but the cold-metal numbness she’d been working to break through was gone. “You here to lecture me, too?” she asked, leaning against the doorframe with a small grin. Trisha’s door, on the far side of their tiny living room, was already closed, their roommate no doubt stripping down to try to catch the last of the evening sunlight, indirect as it might be through her east-facing window.

A muscle twitched along Neel’s jaw. “I guess I could point out how badly it would have fucked her up if she’d watched you smash into the building,” he said, the evenness of his voice at odds with his glare. “Or how I’d have felt, seeing it on the news.”

“I know what I’m doing,” she said, just as evenly; it was an old argument, one she’d had with everyone who had passed through her life, and she wasn’t sure if the fact that Neel and Trisha had stuck with her anyway counted as winning or losing it. “That was never going to happen.” An old lie, as well; however carefully she weighed the odds and checked her equipment, there was always risk. That was what made it worth doing, not that anyone without the same drive to shout defiance at the Void would understand.

His shoulder lifted in the slightest of shrugs. “No point in a lecture, then, when we both know it’s not going to change anything.”

A gaze like banked coals still bored into her, and Brandy felt the faintest stirring of unease. “Then what—”

“Why the hashtag?”

A breath of laughter escaped her. Her roommates had been working for Joja since they’d finished college—of course loyalty ran deep. “Fucked if I know,” she said. “I told you I didn’t use Trisha’s stories to get onto the roof; I had help.” She shivered with remembered excitement; the slow descent on a line from the helicopter couldn’t beat the rush of a good jump, but it had held its own thrill.

“Help?” Neel asked. “Why would someone go to all the trouble—and expense—of putting you up to tis for the sake of a hashtag?”

She grinned at him. “I didn’t question their motives, just checked the quality of their gear. Some would-be rival of Joja’s, I suppose, wanting to stir up distrust.” Not hard to do; the Joja Corporation had their hands in just about every industry, and there were always ridiculous conspiracy theories floating around. And _any_ successful company was inevitably hiding _something_ , even if only the sort of marketing and sales numbers that Trisha got so worked up over. “Don’t get your shorts in a bunch, Neel, a little competition is _good_ for commerce. Keeps everyone from getting complacent. Besides, Joja’ll find a way to spin this in their favor. They always do.” They’d turned the last major hashtag scandal into such a wildly successful campaign to launch a new streaming service that if she hadn’t been living with Trisha and Neel, she would never have known that the megacorp hadn’t started the rumors in the first place.

Something flickered in Neel’s eyes at that, but before she could make sense of it the dull chill that had become the new normal descended. “They always do,” he said, and turned away.

Brandy worried her lower lip between her teeth as he retreated to his room. What had all that been about? She ran a hand through the disheveled spikes of her pink hair. Well, if company loyalty was what it took to snap her friend out of his funk, then by Yoba she was going to make sure he saw every anti-Joja hashtag and meme that crossed her timelines. She closed her door again and threw herself onto the bed, reaching for her phone. The online group where she had first met her “sponsor” had several good ones the other day…


	4. 19 Fall Y0 - Abigail

“Dude, how is practicing making you _worse_ at pool?” Abigail Martin asked, trapping the chalk-smudged white ball with her foot before it could roll under the couch. She nudged it back toward the table without looking up from her phone.

Sam shrugged irritably and picked it up. “Any word from Sebastian?” He swore as his second attempt at the trick shot sent a different ball off the opposite end of the table.

She rolled her eyes. “Not since the ‘I’ll be done soon’ he sent an hour and a half ago. I think he’s got me on mute now.” Otherwise her rapid-fire texting of increasingly insulting nicknames would have at least gotten a response telling her to knock it off. She sighed and switched apps. “Are you gonna keep that up until you break something, or can we go a few rounds on Journey of—Woah!”

“What, did Seb finally get back to you?” He leaned his cue against the table and grabbed his beer from the surface of the defunct platformer game Gus kept promising he’d get fixed one of these days.

“No, he’s obviously standing us up again,” she said. “But check this out!” She restarted the video and angled the phone so they could both see it.

A news reporter stood in front of Joja Tower, droning about some corporate nonsense for a few seconds, then broke off as someone shouted. The camera angle jerked upward to the accompaniment of more gasps and shrieks, and then a weird electronic wail as the video finally locked onto a brightly dressed figure falling from the top of the tower. An instant later, a parachute snapped open, the jumper a single point of color contrast against the black and white nylon canopy.

As the parachutist disappeared between a pair of buildings, Sam reached out and snagged Abigail’s phone. “Hey!” He ignored her as he poked the screen a few times, then turned it back around. He’d paused the video on a clear shot of the parachute. “What is Joja hiding?” Abigail read out loud. She blew a lock of violet hair out of her face. “Ugh. Just another publicity stunt by your employer, huh?” She grabbed her phone back and rewound the video. Even if a corporate-directed performance wasn’t quite as exciting as an unauthorized jump, it was still cool to watch. She turned up the volume—this had happened _yesterday_ and she was just now hearing about it? Of course, it must have been while she’d been up on the mountain. She’d left her phone at home to test her theory that the reason Marlon always showed up so fast when she tried to sneak into the mines was by tracking the device. _That_ had been a waste of time. “Any idea what Joja’s launching this time?”

“No, but I’m sure Morris will be full of it on Monday.”

“Morris is always full of it,” Abigail muttered, to Sam’s wordless agreement, and she smoothed the scowl from her face. It wasn’t his fault the only available jobs in town were with the company trying to drive her father out of business. She played the video again, then went searching for more coverage of the stunt. Who cared what Joja Corp was hiding? She wanted to know more about the person behind those goggles.


	5. 22 Fall Y0 - Trisha

“What do you mean, access denied?” Trisha muttered, swiping her card through the reader again. The door to the roof stairwell remained stubbornly locked. Footsteps on the stairs gave her enough warning to step back before the door opened.

A security guard frowned at her. “I’m sorry, this area is off limits.”

“I have permission,” she began, but he shook his head.

“You’re not on my list,” he said. “Security only.”

There must be some mistake, but arguing with the man wasn’t going to get her anywhere; she was familiar with the intractability of bureaucracy, as well as how to work around it.

Less than five minutes later she strode through the doors of the Human Resources department.

“Is Clarissa in?” she asked the receptionist. “I’m afraid it’s urgent.” It wouldn’t be as much of a problem if it hadn’t rained all weekend, dark storm clouds sealing away the light she needed, but it had, and today was beautiful, and she was _starving_.

“I believe so, Ms Curtis,” the young man said. “Just a moment, please, and I’ll let her know you’re here.”

Her HR rep rose to greet her when she came into the office. “Trisha! What are you doing here, instead of outside?”

Good; if Clarissa was as much in the dark—so to speak—as she was, then this was definitely some sort of screw-up. “I’d like to know that myself. My badge wouldn’t let me onto the roof today, and there was a security guard there saying I wasn’t ‘on his list.’”

The brown-haired woman frowned slightly. “I don’t remember seeing anything about it in today’s briefs,” she murmured, “but let me double-check.” She turned to her computer and Trisha snagged a chair by the window while the other woman sorted through her email. “No, we definitely weren’t notified. Security has been in an uproar, and they’re ignoring the usual channels.” She tapped a manicured nail on the desk a few times. “This could take some time to sort out. Are you working on anything time sensitive today?”

“We’re still recovering from the disruption the meeting caused—especially since it was rescheduled. But no, I don’t have anything critical right now.”

“Good. For today, then, I can offer you a half-day off as an alternative accommodation—it won’t come out of your personal time. I realize the last few days must have been difficult, and that will give you a chance to recuperate while I sort out what’s going on here. Would that be acceptable?”

It wasn’t ideal—she had work to do, and though none of it _had_ to be done right this minute, she didn’t relish the thought of scrambling to make it up later, but the only other choice appeared to be wasting her whole lunch break inside while Clarissa made phone calls and sent emails. “Yes, that would be fine.”

It was less fine when she returned to work on Tuesday to a morning meeting request from Clarissa—especially since the head of security was also listed as attending.

“I apologize, Ms Curtis; you should have been notified that there were new restrictions on roof access. I’m afraid that with as busy as we have been in the aftermath of the incident, my people dropped the ball.” The man in charge of keeping Joja employees safe—not only in Joja Tower but also the hundreds satellite offices, retail locations, factories, and research sites around the globe—looked like he had stepped out of a military recruitment poster, save for the gray heavily threaded through his short, dark hair. That was hardly surprising, since he had been an officer in the Ferngill Army, coming to work for Joja Corp after retirement.

“Understandable, under the circumstances,” Trisha said with a smile; four glorious hours of sunbathing at the local pool had done wonders for her mood. “What new hoops do I need to jump through to regain my clearance?”

The man grimaced and ran a hand over his square jaw. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible in the immediate future,” he said. When both women began to protest he raised a hand. “This is for your safety—and I mean yours specifically, Ms Curtis.”

“How is denying me a long-standing medical accommodation intended to benefit me?” she retorted.

His eyes narrowed. “It took the computer types some doing, but we were able to isolate the trespasser’s voice from one of the security microphones on the roof.” Trisha froze; she had managed to pry out of Brandy that she had used a voice relay device—one that cancelled out her own voice entirely and then replicated words and pitch in artificial tones—rather than a modulator that could in theory be reverse-analyzed. It wasn’t something she would have been able to afford on her own, and she had refused to say a word about how she had obtained it, only that she’d already given it back, which worried Trisha more than a little. But if Security didn’t have her actual _voice_ , that meant—

He took out a tablet and tapped a few commands. _“Oops. You’re early.”_ The increased noise in the background of the second sentence did at least support her lie to the police that she hadn’t understood the words that day, but there was no denying them now. “As you can hear, this criminal was aware of your usual schedule, and as such we can’t afford to rule out that you may have been in some way targeted.”

“That’s absurd! Whoever planned this must have done surveillance, so of course they would have seen me. They were clearly assuming I _wouldn’t_ be there at that hour. There’s nothing to suggest that I was—or am—at risk.”

“With all due respect, that’s my call, not yours,” he said. “The roof is off limits except to security personnel.”

“If security is patrolling the roof, then there would be no danger to Ms Curtis,” Clarissa said, her tone suggested that she was rehashing an earlier argument rather than raising a new objection. She nodded an apology to Trisha. “It wouldn’t be as private, but ...”

The idea of trying to do yoga while strangers were watching her was not appealing, but she’d lead a whole damned _class_ if it meant getting her sun time back. “I would have no objection to that.”

The head of security leaned back in his chair and ran a hand over his short-cropped hair. “In truth, neither would I. Unfortunately, the Board of Directors has decided it would be bad for the company’s image if it even appeared we were putting an employee at risk, and if we’re to address this—” his mouth twisted “—‘hashtag’ nonsense, Joja Corp can’t afford any additional negative publicity.” He rose abruptly. “I hope we’re able to get this sorted out quickly, Ms Curtis, but until the trespasser has been arrested, I believe Ms Parker has some alternatives to discuss with you. I need to get back to the control center.” He nodded cordially and left the room.

As Clarissa explained the temporary measures Joja was putting in place for her, Trisha’s mind kept replaying Colonel Morris’s words: _“until the trespasser is arrested.”_

She was going to _kill_ Brandy.


	6. 26 Fall Y0 - Neel

Neel Agarwal leaned back in the booth and offered the waiter a smile that would have astonished his roommates. “Just the check, please.” He took out his wallet and leafed through it ostentatiously, making sure the most important thing in it—his Joja Corp employee ID—would be visible to anyone watching him.

And he _was_ being watched. The frown on his face as he pulled out a few notes—too few—was as much a mask as the smile had been, and through lowered eyelashes he saw more than one of the watchers come to the correct conclusion about the state of his cash supply, and the futility of attempting to rob him when he left the seedy bar. He worried his lower lip between his teeth and tucked the bills back in place, fingers hovering over the credit card slots instead, as if trying to decide which might be able to bear the load of the cheap beer and cheaper appetizers he had ordered.

A shadow fell over the table, and his heart rate quickened as he looked up. “Can I help you?” He closed his wallet and pulled it closer to him.

The woman’s mouth curved in something that might, charitably, be called a smile. “I’m thinking perhaps I could help you,” she said. “Having trouble paying the bill—a corporate type like you?”

It was no effort at all to let his brows draw together in anger—only to keep the full depth of it from showing. “I’m just a secretary,” he said. “The pay’s crap, but the execs can’t have the help looking like they actually _shop_ at our stores.” He flicked a crumb off of the sleeve of his crisp white shirt.

He kept the flicker of satisfaction off his face as the woman slid onto the bench opposite him. “Tell you want, Mr. Just-a-secretary—I’ll cover the bill, if you can give me a bit of help.”

He leaned back. “You looking for a job? I could use the recruitment bonus, and I write a damned good letter of recommendation—just tell me what to put in the blanks.”

She sneered at him. “For shitty pay and shitty clothes? I’ll pass, thanks.”

He reminded himself that defending his wardrobe would be out of character for the role he was playing. “Fair enough. What, then?”

She propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her intertwined fingers; it must appear to the remaining watchers that they were flirting with each other—and he supposed they were, in a way. “I was thinking… information.”

He drew back. “I don’t think—”

The woman waved a hand. “I’m not asking for much, not for fried cheese sticks and a beer.” She made a face at his uncleared dishes. “It’s been all over the news—what _is_ Joja hiding? They’re trying to claim it as an advertising campaign, but I saw the interviews the news channels snagged right after the jump, and those bigwigs talked more spin than substance. So, tell me the truth— _did_ Joja set up that stunt?”

It was an obvious test, since she matched the fragments of description he’d been able to pry out of Brandy about her “sponsor.” “‘It would hardly do to reveal everything at once,’” he said, parroting one of the more obnoxious marketing execs down to her precise inflection; then he snorted. “Of course not, though no one’ll have a clue, once they get the PR folks all pointed the same direction. Whoever that jumper was did me a solid, I’ll tell you that—the overtime I pulled that day means I’ll be able to make rent this season.” He could almost see the pieces falling into place in her mind: poorly paid, highly placed, not picky about where his money came from—a source worth cultivating.

If he was very careful, the woman across the table from him wouldn’t realize that cultivation could run in both directions. Before he could turn over the secrets smoldering in his memory, he had to ensure they were going to someone who would be able to do something worthwhile with them.


	7. 26 Fall Y0 - Sebastian

Sebastian Douglas took a sip of his coffee and made a face; it had gone cold. He considered taking a break to get a fresh cup, or at least stick this one in the microwave, but when he turned down the volume of his music, he could hear voices drifting down from the shop floor. His mother’s voice had the overtones that meant “customer” rather than “family”; he might be able to sneak past the shop door without being spotted, but if his mother or—worse—stepfather noticed, he would either have to make small talk or endure a lecture later about needing to be more sociable, and never mind that whoever it was had come to see Robin, not him.

He pushed the cup far enough away that he wouldn’t repeat the mistake of drinking from it, lit a cigarette, and resumed scanning for the errors keeping his code from compiling.

A few hundred lines later, his phone chimed with a message from Sam, and he pulled himself away from work long enough to check it. No, he did not have time to run an extra session of Solarian Chronicles that evening. He had a deadline to meet, or exceed if possible; he was building a reputation on the freelancing site he used for doing fast work without sacrificing quality. The codebase he was given to start from had more bugs than the lake at the height of mosquito season, which made even the planned timeline a tight one, but he needed the work—and the recommendations that would come with impressing a difficult client could only help his bottom line.

Another chime. “No, probably not tomorrow, either, or the day after that,” he muttered as he typed in the response. Even as he tapped _Send_ a new message popped up, this time from Abigail. He read it twice, and then a third time, to make sure he hadn’t misunderstood, and then hit _Dial_ instead of _Reply_.

“Are you out of your mind?” he asked without preamble when she picked up.

“Hah, I thought that might actually get a response out of you,” she said.

He sagged back in his chair in relief. “Then you weren’t serious.”

“Of course I am, and tomorrow will be the perfect time. Everyone else’ll be in town.”

“Abigail…”

“You still owe me a birthday present, remember.”

“I’ll buy you a damned pumpkin.”

“Oh, come _on_ , Seb. You’ve been in there—”

“I’ve hung out just inside the entrance a couple of times.” His mother had given up forbidding him from smoking in his room—but that only applied to tobacco, and neither Abby nor his mother needed to know he ever touched anything else. “The mines are fucking creepy at the best of times, and there’s no way I’m going anywhere near there on Spirit’s Eve.”

“Sebaaaaaaaastian—”

“ _No_ , Abby. And don’t even think about going there on your own. If you’re not at the town square with the rest of us I swear to Yoba I’ll tell your parents.”

“Ugh, you’re no fun. Fine, but I don’t want a pumpkin, I already have half a dozen of them. I _asked_ for jewelry, maybe a nice silver ring or pendant, but no, Dad got a deal on gourds.” Sebastian set the phone to speaker and half-listened to her rant as he kept working, unmuting every few minutes to make some sound of agreement. This proved to be a tactical error; by the time she wound down, he had somehow been talked into exploring the abandoned farm on the outskirts of town in lieu of a trip into the mines. _Not_ on Spirit’s Eve, but the day after.

After they hung up, he glared at his phone, realizing that he was also going to have to stick around for the whole festival instead of heading home early, or she absolutely would go to the mines by herself. At least the eyesore of a costume she had picked would make it impossible to lose sight of her, and he’d figured out years ago that as long as he hung around whatever the creepiest decorations were, people left him alone.

He jumped as the door opened. _I wonder if I could get one of those skeleton puppets or whatever they are for my room_ , he thought as he glared at his stepfather. “You ever hear of knocking?”

Demetrius ignored the question. “It’s time for dinner.”

He glanced at the clock; he had lost more time to Abby’s determination to risk life and limb than he’d realized. “I’ve got work to do—I’ll grab something later.”

“Your games can wait, Sebastian. Your mother invited the mayor to join us, so I expect you to be polite and eat with us.”

And there went any trace of appetite he might have had. “I’m _working_ , Demetrius. This is my _job_.” Bad enough to have surprise guests sprung on him—he’d asked his mother and stepfather to stop doing that, or at least let him know more than a couple of minutes beforehand, and of course no one listened—but the mayor? Lewis could talk for _hours_ about whatever never-going-to-happen civic improvement project he was on about this season, and then a couple more on the subject of every time Sam had ever caused a problem in Pelican Town, even if Sebastian hadn’t had anything to do with it.

He was already getting to his feet, though. Pissing off his stepfather would just make the inevitable awkwardness even worse. The cheerful conversation between Maru and the mayor when he reached the kitchen didn’t help, either. Demetrius wasn’t rude enough to say it in front of a guest, but his expression was all too familiar: _Why can’t you be more like your stepsister?_

He could have stayed in his room and gotten more work done, for all the attention Lewis paid to him—not that he was complaining about being ignored. But as he picked at his mushroom casserole, trying to avoid the mushrooms, he couldn’t help noticing that Lewis seemed distracted by something. Fortunately, when he couldn’t take any more of the forced togetherness and stilted conversation around the table, his nicotine habit gave him a ready excuse, despite the universal disapproval his announcement that he was going out for a smoke drew.

He was still outside when Lewis left, and the man didn’t appear to notice Sebastian, who had his hood drawn up against the wind—despite the fact that the mayor walked within a few feet of him as he headed, not for the village, but the cabin up by the mines, which housed the pair of old-timers who called themselves the Adventurers’ Guild. Sebastian stared after him as he disappeared inside, then shrugged and stubbed out his cigarette. No doubt it had something to do with tomorrow’s festival, since the “guild” provided some of the decorations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Now that we've got all the major players on the stage, updates are going to be dropping to twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays.


	8. 10 Winter Y0 - Elliott

“Well, hello there, stranger!” Elliott looked up as someone claimed the seat across the small table from him.

“Good evening, Leah,” he said, lifting his glass in salute before taking a sip of the golden liquid it held. He closed his eyes for a moment to savor the complex flavors and the mellow warmth of the alcohol, most welcome against the lingering chill from the walk into town.

“Bought the good stuff tonight, did you?”

He opened his eyes and gave her a mock glare. “A triple-aged fairy rose mead goes far beyond such trite labels as ‘the good stuff,’ thank you very much.”

She leaned her cheek on her hand. “I’ll take your word for it—I prefer wine, myself.” She nodded as the blue-haired bartender, who he kept accidentally calling by his sister’s name, set a glass in front of her and filled it with a fine red vintage. “Thanks, Emily.”

Elliott made another mental note of the name; perhaps it would stick, this time.

Leah toyed with the stem of her glass but didn’t drink. “So, is this celebration or consolation?”

He was spared the need to reply when the saloon door slammed open, ushering in a blast of icy air and a commotion that turned every head in the room. The first through the entrance was Abigail, whose name he could remember only because he had once overheard Pierre complain that her room always looked like a storm wind had swept through it. The other two were her usual companions, whose names he kept tangling—they both started with _S_ , but beyond that he wasn’t certain. Abigail and the fair-haired one were hauling their friend through the door, backward, one gripping each of the other man’s arms.

“Come on, you two, I already said I give up!” the latter grumbled, trying to free himself as he stumbled over the threshold.

“Not quickly enough!” Abigail said. The blond grinned and pulled the hand not holding his friend from behind his back; it was full of snow.

His captive companion saw this over his shoulder and yelped. “Sam, don’t you dare—” He ducked and the missile struck Abigail instead.

“No snowball fights indoors, you three!” the saloon’s owner shouted through the kitchen pass-through, as Abigail laughed and brushed the white fluff from her amethyst hair, sending as much of it as possible toward her friends, and a fair amount toward the table where Elliott and Leah were seated.

“Sorry, Gus—this wasn’t my idea!” the intended victim of the attack called as the other two continued dragging him past the bar. His face was flushed red, and with more than the cold, judging by the way his eyes darted toward, then shied away from, the other bar patrons snickering at his predicament. Elliott had to bite his lower lip to keep from joining in the mirth, but he was no stranger to the sort of embarrassment that left one wishing the floor would open up beneath one’s feet, and he didn’t wish to add to it any more than his presence alone inevitably would.

Esth—no, _Emily_ —grabbed a copy of the specials list and walked around the bar, rolling her eyes. “You’d think they were still in grade school, the way they act, and here I’m going to go sell them alcohol,” she murmured to him and Leah before disappearing into the arcade. An argument over whether cake or pizza was more appropriate for a birthday celebration drifted in from the next room.

Leah turned from watching the drama play out, her expression wistful enough that Elliott had a moment of panic; had he forgotten her birthday, too? Had she ever told him when it was? He resolved to check the community calendar in the square to see if she had posted the information on it. But what she said was, “It must be nice, having lifelong friends like that.”

Elliott was not certain the apparent birthday boy would agree, at the moment, but he nodded and took another sip of his mead. “I suppose it would be.”

She finally raised her glass. “My mother’s in the Navy, so we moved every few years, following her from port to port. My friends and I always swore we’d keep in touch, but somehow that never lasted. Were you a military brat, too?”

“No, I lived in the same house all my life, until I came to Pelican Town.” He stared down into the liquid gold in front of him, though he could feel her gaze on him. Finally, he shrugged. “Distance isn’t the only thing that can cause friendships to drift apart.”

When he turned back toward her he could see the curiosity in her eyes, but she didn’t press the matter; it was one of the things he liked about her. “You never did say what brought you here tonight. Writing going well, or poorly?”

“Coldly,” he said, with a faint smile. “No particular occasion, good or otherwise—just a whim for an indulgence on a chilly night. And yourself?” He nodded toward her glass. “I noticed your bottle had an iridium label, as well.” She was, he knew, a more frequent visitor to the saloon than he was, preferring a greater degree of socializing despite her woodland cabin being as isolated as his home on the beach, but her usual selections were frugal.

“I _am_ celebrating,” she said, raising her wine in an invitation to a toast. “I finished a new piece today.”

“Congratulations,” he said, tapping his glass to hers, and they both drank. “Would you show it to me tomorrow, if I call on you at home?”

She smiled, as she did whenever he tossed out such deliberately archaic phrases, but then she set her drink down and laid her hand atop his unoccupied one, where it rested on the bar. “You could come see it tonight, if you like.” She dropped her eyes and looked up at him through her eyelashes.

It was not the first time she had made such an offer, and for a wild moment he considered taking her up on it this time. She was beautiful, her red hair all but glowing in the warm light of the saloon, and he couldn’t deny the draw of her creative soul, so differently focused from his own. But—she was a sculptor, a _visual_ artist, and the thought of what she would make of him dashed the impulse.

“I think I would prefer to see it by daylight,” he said, gently sliding his hand out from under hers.

She accepted the rebuff with no more than a faint sigh of disappointment. “You’ve already had a preview,” she said. “It’s an elaboration on the same concept as my snow sculpture at the Festival of Ice.”

“Then I shall look forward to viewing the full masterpiece,” he said. He had been astonished that the delicate construct hadn’t collapsed under its own weight until nearly the end of the day, and seeing it rendered in more durable materials than snow and ice would be impressive.

“Did I hear someone mention the ice festival? Elliott, what in the world possessed you to enter the fishing contest when you’d never even held a pole before?” Emily asked as she passed by them on her way to her post behind the counter. “Don’t worry about your tabs so far, by the way; Sam’s buying everyone’s current round to apologize for the snowball fight.”

Elliott looked down at his glass, and then Leah’s. “He might come to regret that.” Though at least there were only two other customers tonight, both the sort of fixtures in the saloon that he doubted would have been ordering top-shelf liquors.

“Oh, he winced when I told him what he was paying for, but he didn’t back down,” she said with a smile. “He’s a good kid, however hard he tries to pretend otherwise. So, the festival?”

He chuckled ruefully. “Willy always makes it look so easy! Since he’s at sea I felt the beach-dwellers ought to be represented in the competition, and I figured I must surely have picked up a few things, watching him.” It had been a spectacularly poor showing, his one “big catch” proving to be a very stubborn soda can. “I had fun with it, though.”

“That’s the important thing,” Leah said.

The muffled burst of laughter from the arcade room seemed to agree with them.


	9. 12 Winter Y0 - Brandy

Brandy had just settled in for a good sulk, a mug that held almost as much peppermint schnapps as hot cocoa in one hand and the TV remote in the other, when the door slammed open, startling her enough that her drink sloshed over the side. She set the mug aside and tried to mop up the brown liquid from her favorite fluffy blanket. “Damnit, Neel, what the f—” She broke off as a brighter ad came on the screen, giving her enough light to see his face close down into a bland non-expression.

He glanced away from her. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t see any lights from the street, so I didn’t think anyone was home.”

Someone who hadn’t been living with Robo-Neel for the last year and change wouldn’t have understood the way that glimpse of thunderous fury cheered her up. “What happened? Date not go well?”

“What?” He looked, for a moment, confusion-blank rather than holding-it-in-blank. Then he shook his head. “What makes you think I was on a date?”

“You’re out late, and dressed up more than usual,” she said, dumping a stack of her favorite cookies onto the coffee table so she could use the paper towel they had been sitting on to dab at the cocoa spill.

He frowned at her. “And you’re in early, and dressed… down.” She crossed her pajama-clad legs and flexed her toes to make the bunny faces on her slippers wiggle their noses at him, not arguing the point. He glanced at the TV, where the ads had ended and the news clip she had been waiting for had begun. “I thought you’d be out there, still. Isn’t there usually a big post-jump party?”

She scowled and took a gulp of her cocoa. She had been looking forward to this all year—the Zuzu City Council had agreed to allow bungee jumping from the Everelle Bridge for one day, no doubt figuring the midwinter chill would reduce the number of participants. “Your fucking employers showed up,” she said. “Said they were looking for ‘talent’ but we both know that’s bullshit. A heads-up from you would have been nice.”

“Nothing about it crossed my desk. Security has its own clerical staff.” His brows drew together. “If you left, isn’t that going to draw attention to you?”

She snorted and jabbed a finger at the screen, where barely a handful of people were lining up along the bridge’s highest span. “The suits might be trying to pass it off as a sponsored stunt, but everyone in the community knows there’s no way the ‘Joja Jumper’ wouldn’t be bragging to anyone who’d hold still long enough if that was true. Most of the serious folks bailed when they heard about Joja being there—some on principle, some ‘cause they figure the Corp’s just trying to pin a charge on anybody who happens to fit body measurements and movement closely enough. A bunch had already stormed off before I heard about it, so it’s not like I was among the first to scram.” She sighed. “Ugh, look at that. It’s an even worse showing than I’d expected. You know they’ll use this as an excuse never to do it again, right? ‘Not enough interest to justify the disruption to normal traffic’ or some shit like that.”

“So now you’re moping,” he said, kicking off his loafers as he headed for his bedroom.

She caught his wrist when he walked past the couch. “And you’re evading. What. Happened.”

He tried to pull away, but they both knew which of them was stronger. “I ran into a high school friend of Vijay’s on the way home,” he said at last. “He didn’t know.”

“Oh, honey.” He didn’t resist when she pulled him down next to her. “So, how badly did you go off on him?”

Neel leaned his head against the back of the couch and rubbed his hands over his face. “I’m not the same asshole I was in middle school, Brandy. I probably didn’t break the news as gently as I could have, but it’s not his fault he hadn’t heard already. Fuck, he didn’t even know my brother had enlisted.”

Brandy wrapped her arms around him. He didn’t pull away, even leaned into her a little. These flashes of real emotion had been getting more frequent; the therapist she and Trish had pushed him into seeing was finally earning their keep. Despite that, she could _see_ him withdrawing back into his head. “Here, it sounds like you need this more than I do.” She shoved her mug into his hands. Maybe a little alcohol could nudge him further toward normal.

He raised it toward his mouth and then flinched as he took a breath. “Gah. No, I don’t.” He thrust it back toward her and coughed. “What did chocolate do to you, to deserve that sort of treatment?”

She grinned at him and set the cup on the coffee table. “Fine, snob, I’ll go make you some with creme de cacao, if we have any. She tossed her blanket over him as she stood. Once she had the milk on the stove, she started poking through the booze supply. “There’s not enough chocolate liqueur to get a mouse tipsy,” she called over her shoulder, setting the nearly empty bottle on the counter to recycle later and reaching for another at the back of the cabinet. “How do you feel about vodka?” She took a closer look at the label. “Uh, maybe not. This must be Trisha’s. Damn, I didn’t know 170-proof vodka was _possible_.” She wanted to get him drunk enough to finally cry, not put him in the hospital.

“There should still be some vanilla vodka, _not_ rocket-fuel strength, in there,” Neel said.

She located it and the rest of her ingredients and busied herself at the stove. “Where is Trish, anyway?” she asked as she poured the results into a mug.

“She didn’t text you? She’s working late—there’s some big report she wants to get done before the office closes for Winter Star.”

“She probably assumed she’d still be home before me,” Brandy said, adding a generous dollop of Neel’s chosen poison. Not to her taste at all, but at least none of them had to worry much about the other roommates swiping their food or booze. The doorknob rattled as she turned around. “Well, speak of the Void, that must be her now.”

“Hey, Trish, how did—Oh, shit!” Neel lunged off the couch, and the mug of cocoa dropped from Brandy’s hand to smash on the floor as Trisha staggered into the apartment and collapsed in a dead faint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry (not sorry) about the cliffhanger, but don't worry too much—Tuesday's update will pick up where this chapter leaves off, rather than jumping back to Pelican Town :)


	10. 12 Winter Y0 - Trisha

_“…get her coat off…”_

_“…recovery position…”_

_“…drag one of those fucking lights out here…”_

Trisha smiled, or at least tried to; it was hard to tell, since she felt a bit like she was floating. Brandy was the only person she knew who could infuse a profanity with that much affection and worry. It wasn’t until light glowed red through her closed eyelids and caressed the skin of her now-bare arms that she realized that concern was directed at her. “Brandy?” she whispered, squinting against the glare as she opened her eyes.

“Oh, thank Yoba,” her roommate said. Judging from her position, she had just shoved a couch cushion under Trisha’s feet.

“Hey, no, stay down for now,” Neel said, and she felt his hands on her shoulders, stopping her attempt to sit up.

“What happened?”

“I was going to ask you that,” Brandy said. “You walked in and passed out.”

“Oh.” To her embarrassment, she felt her eyes watering; she squeezed them closed, hoping her friends would attribute the tears to the bright light. “It was kind of a long day. I guess I was hungrier than I realized.” Clarissa had arranged for one of the less popular rooms to be converted into a “light box” for her, filled with bulbs that she had been assured were the very cutting edge in natural light replication. A similar lamp in her cubicle—not _too_ bright, since the light levels on the analysts’ floor had been carefully calibrated to “optimize performance across the widest range of human preferences”—supplemented that.

It wasn’t enough. Artificial light never was, and the reason the conference room was rarely used was its lack of windows.

She had filled her bedroom with similar bulbs; their electricity bill was going to be murder this season, since she left them on all night. Most winters, she spent as much time outside as possible, but it had been bitterly cold this year, and while she might mind the chill less than some people, that didn’t make her immune to frostbite.

Trisha felt a tear roll down her cheek, but the sob she heard wasn’t her own. “This is my fault,” Brandy said. “If I hadn’t—” She took a shaky breath. “I’m going to turn myself in.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Neel let go of her shoulders and got to his feet, and Trisha pushed herself up on one elbow.

“Don’t you dare, Brandy,” she said, glaring with as much force as she could muster.

“But—”

“It wouldn’t help,” Neel said, putting a hand on the pink-haired woman’s shoulder. “First, they’d probably figure Trisha was in on it, since she’s your roommate, no matter what you tell them. Me, too, for that matter. And even if they accept that neither of us knew what you were going to do—or that you’d managed to keep us in the dark afterward, which _would_ be a lie—it still wouldn’t fix things. Security’s decided the rooftop’s a ‘point of vulnerability,’ and they’re not going to change their mind just because one so-called threat is dealt with.”

Trisha blinked at his sudden vitriol, even before the full implication of his words sank in. “I’m not getting my sun breaks back, am I?” she whispered.

“Not unless you suddenly decide you’d rather be a security guard than an analyst, and probably not even then,” Neel said, his voice softening. “I wish I could say otherwise, but I filed the memo this morning.”

“Trisha—I’m sorry—” Brandy’s misery nearly pushed her over the edge.

“I’ll be all right,” Trisha said, willing herself to believe it. “I just have to hold out until Spring. I can take some vacation time once the year rolls over. Go somewhere tropical to recharge.” For that matter, it was only a couple of weeks until the whole office closed down for the Feast of the Winter Star, and while it was probably too late to book holiday tickets at a price she could afford, spending the whole four-day weekend under her lamps should help. The weather might even warm up enough to spend time outside as Spring drew near, despite the current dire forecasts. She forced herself to sit up all the way; her head spun, but the dizziness soon passed. “Help me to my room, would you?”

“Trish,” Neel began, but she only shook her head and repeated that she would be _fine_. Brandy hauled her to her feet, and he followed the two of them, carrying the lamp they had pulled out of her bedroom.

“Could you bring me one of my shakes—the ones with the blue label? This was mostly my own fault, you know,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed as Brandy circled the room, switching on the rest of the lights. “I knew I was going to be working late, but I didn’t bring dinner with me.”

The look Neel gave her said he didn’t accept that for a second, but he said nothing, only brought her a bottle of the carefully balanced, bland mix of essential nutrients that was one of the few things she could still eat. He handed to her and raised an eyebrow, a trace of mischief in his face that she hadn’t seen since his brother’s death. “You want some of your vodka as a chaser, or did you buy that stuff to strip paint?”

She opened the bottle and chugged half the contents—the quicker it went down, the less she had to taste it—before replying. “Not tonight. I need to think, not pass out again.”

He and Brandy took he hint and left, closing the door behind them with no more than a reminder that they were only a shout away if she needed anything.

Once the door was shut, Trisha pulled off the silk shell she had worn under the jacket her anxious friends had stripped off of her, well as her slacks and stockings. As the pale imitation of sunlight began soaking in, she rolled over on the bed and buried her face in her pillow so they wouldn’t hear her sobs. _I_ can _hold on until Spring. Can’t I?_

When the nutrient shake and the lamps had taken the edge off of the gnawing hunger that had become her constant companion, she was finally able to stop the flow of tears, as well. She sat up and wiped her eyes. _All right, Trisha Curtis; you’re an analyst, so start analyzing. What are the data?_

First: It was 17 days until Spring, when her new time-off allotment would go into effect. As a side note, she should always save at least a couple of vacation days for Winter, going forward, rather than relying on the holiday for time off.

Second: Could she actually afford the tropical vacation she had mentioned? _More data needed._

She padded across the small room to her desk and unlocked her tablet. Spring was normally the off season for the sorts of destinations she was interested in, but based on the limited availability and rising prices she was looking at, the harsh winter had put similar ideas in the minds of a lot of other people. Factoring in her projections for the upcoming electric bill… palm trees by the ocean were not in her near future. She might be able to swing it if she borrowed money from her parents, but she had made too much of a point of her independence for such a request not to worry them, and the last thing she wanted to do was interrupt the extended post-retirement jaunt they were finally treating themselves to.

She sighed and shoved her hair back from her face, gathering it into a loose bun on top of her head and securing it with a pen.

Third: The Fern Islands were out of reach, but there were other sunny spots that weren’t as popular for vacations. _Where did I put that brochure about the Calico Desert?_ She rummaged through her desk drawers. She didn’t find the ad, but she did come across something else she had all but forgotten about.

She turned the envelope, starting to yellow with age, over in her hands, and a sad smile crossed her face at the sight of the familiar handwriting. Grandpa Pat had been almost a third parent to her, caring for her during the day when his daughter and her husband were working, taking Trisha on trips all around the world during school breaks… When he had learned his cancer was terminal, he had written her a series of letters to be opened at various milestones in her life—important birthdays, high school and college graduations—and two more, without fixed dates. It wasn’t as good as having him there to share those moments, but at least she could imagine his voice, telling her what he thought he would have said.

Some of the letters had stung, because she hadn’t started getting sick until after his passing, and his assumption that she was still the same active, happy girl he had known showed in his words. And the first of the undated letters—“To be opened on a day of great joy”—well, she supposed that winning a major promotion and raise within a year of starting her dream job could be filed under “or some other wonderful accomplishment,” but most of the letter was written for a new bride or a new mother. She had loved her grandpa dearly, but he had been a bit old-fashioned about some things.

Her fond smile faded a little as her fingers traced over the wax seal—speaking of old-fashioned. This one had the longest inscription of any of them, and the most cryptic. “For a day when you feel crushed by the burden of modern life, and your bright spirit fades before a growing emptiness.” It was just as well that her parents had held back this letter, and the “joy” one, until the other letters had been doled out, or she might have torn it open long ago, back when she had feared she wouldn’t live to finish junior high, let alone high school. She had begged her parents for all the letters at once, terrified she would never get to read all of his words to her. But how much less meaningful would the “joy” letter have been, if the prompt for it had been her relief at finally having a name for her illness, and a treatment plan that mostly _worked_?

And this… what did he even mean by “crushed by the burden of modern life,” let alone—A sudden sob tore through her, and she thrust the letter aside to save it from the unexpected flood of tears. He couldn’t have known—dryad syndrome was rare, so rare there were only two or three doctors in the world who even studied it—and she hadn’t been showing the signs yet, but—

 _I have worked so hard for Joja Corporation, and what do I have to show for it?_ Clarissa was still fighting for her, but Neel was right; the discussion had already moved away from “sunning herself on the roof” to “taking an occasional work-at-home day.” She loved her job, finding all the hidden meanings and connections where others saw only columns of numbers, but how much longer would she be a “rising star” in the company if she spent a quarter of the year so hungry she could barely think?

She sniffled, swiped a tissue over her eyes, and blew her nose. Then she picked up Grandpa Pat’s letter and cracked the seal before she could second-guess herself.

 _“If you’re reading this, you must be in dire need of a change…”_ She read the letter and the property deed tucked behind it twice through, her confusion only growing.

Then she shrugged on her bathrobe and ventured out to retrieve her purse from where she had dropped it by the front door, barely noticing her roommates’ concern, or their relief at seeing her up and about already.

Retreating to the glaring light of her room, she closed the door started a new search. She dug her phone out of her bag and called the number she found, expecting an automated list of office hours and perhaps a chance to leave a message, but as she mentally rehearsed what she might say, the line picked up. “Hello?” a man’s voice said.

“I’m sorry, I think I have wrong number,” she said, looking again at the search results. “I was trying to reach the Pelican Town mayor’s office?”

A quiet chuckle on the other end of the line. “You’ve reached it, though we’re a bit small to have a proper town hall. I’m Mayor Lewis.”

That name had been mentioned in the letter, but it took her a moment longer to realize that he meant she had called his personal phone. “Oh, dear, I’m sorry to bother you so late! I was expecting a recording—”

“It’s quite all right; I’m a bit of a night owl. What can I do for you, Ms…”

“Curtis. Trisha Curtis. I—this is going to sound strange, but I found a letter from my grandfather…”

An hour or so later, she slid on her sleep mask, sprawled across the bed—the “sun” lamps still blazing—and catalogued a final data point:

Fourth: Grandpa Pat had owned a farm in some place called Stardew Valley, which he had never taken her to in all their travels, or so much as mentioned to his only grandchild.

And he had left it to her.


	11. 16 Winter Y0 - Abigail

Cheery pop music blared from the TV, loud enough that anyone outside Abigail’s room would hear only it, and not the quieter video playing on her laptop. Her wrists were already aching, but she raised her arms again, trying to copy the movements of the man on the computer screen. Silver flashed through the air, and she swore under her breath as she lost her grip on the hilt and stumbled back. It was only a practice sword, with blunt edges and a rounded tip, but that didn’t mean dropping it on her foot wouldn’t hurt.

Kicking it under the bed wasn’t a pleasant feeling, either, but footsteps approaching the door made it necessary. “Abby? What in the world are you doing?” Her mother opened the door just as she slammed the laptop closed. “Doesn’t that game of yours says to clear the space around you before playing?”

Abigail smiled, picked up a strategically placed controller, and paused the console; her mother didn’t pay enough attention to her daughter’s “childish” hobbies to realize the abysmally low score meant Player 1 wasn’t even trying to keep time with the music. “Yeah, I know. I moved around more than usual. No need to call Doc Harvey, though, I just stumbled and dropped this.”

“Well, be more careful, honey. You know, you _could_ offer to help your father stock shelves, and put all that energy to a more productive use.”

“Stocking shelves won’t help me kick Sam’s ass the next time we have a dance off,” she retorted, tapping buttons to end the current song and drop back to the menu.

“Language, Abigail!”

“Fine, I’ll kick his butt instead. Happy now?”

Her mother only cast her eyes toward the ceiling. “Just try to keep the noise to a minimum during the day, would you? We do have customers in the store, sometimes.” With a last, worried look she left, closing the door behind her.

Abigail took out some of her annoyance with the interruption on the game, scoring a near-perfect on one of the harder songs. When she was certain her mother wasn’t going to pop back in, she pulled the sword out from under the edge of her comforter.

The old farts at the Adventurer’s Guild kept refusing her requests to join, or even to train with them unofficially, so she was going to have to get good enough on her own to prove she belonged there. She queued up another dance song and restarted the “Learn from the World’s Best Swordmasters!” video on her computer. She and her parents had gone to the Night Market yesterday, and they were both staying home tonight. That would give her the chance to buy the _real_ sword the merchant who usually set up shop in the woods had promised to smuggle into the less-monitored floating marketplace—but a sharp blade would be a waste of the money she had been saving up all year if she didn’t know how to use it.


	12. 17 Winter Y0 - Trisha

“You can’t be serious!” Clarissa stared at the paper on her desk as if she expected it to vanish in a puff of smoke at any moment.

“I’m sorry, but I am,” Trisha said, folding her hands in her lap. “I recently found out I inherited some property from my grandfather, and I’m going to see if I can make a go of it on his farm.”

“You’re… leaving Joja Corporation to go grub in the dirt?” The Human Resources manager was staring at her, now. “You know, you don’t have a noncompete clause in your contract. If someone is trying to snipe you away from us, you can tell me. I’m sure we can make a very competitive counteroffer.”

“Spending my days outdoors, no neighbors near enough to complain about what I wear in my own home, and all the sunlight I can eat?” Trisha shrugged. “I’m not saying I won’t be bored out of my mind after a season or two, and I have no idea if I’ll be any good at farming, but I’ve got to try.”

“But—”

“ _Look_ at me, Clarissa. Something’s got to change.”

Her long-time advocate—and friend—finally did just that. “Oh. Trisha, I’m sorry, you know I’ve been fighting for you, but—”

“It’s not your fault,” Trisha assured her. “But my mind’s made up. I won’t be coming back after Winter Star—that should give me time to tie up loose ends and make notes on my ongoing projects for whoever replaces me.”

“You’re one of our best analysts; no one can ‘replace’ you.” But her sigh was resigned. “I’ll draw up the rest of the paperwork. You’re leaving on good terms, despite the short notice, so when you’re ready to come back, we’ll have a place for you.” Then she brightened. “On the plus side, that means we can actually hang out beyond work events, at least online.”

“I’d like that,” Trisha said, and jotted her personal email and cell number on a business card before returning to the cubicle farm to start working on her transition plan.

Despite the fact that it was already dark when she left work, Trisha felt more cheerful than she had since Summer. She had never been one to clutter her workstation with a lot of personal touches, but she had brought home a few of the thing she did keep there, to make the coming change feel _real_.

Brandy looked up from her current favorite video game as Trisha nudged the door open wider with her hip, her hands occupied with the cardboard box she had liberated from the recycling pile. “Well, someone’s in a good mood. They find a way to bottle sunshine, finally?”

“Oh, that would be nice,” Trisha said, staggering as she tried to shut the door without dropping her burden. “No, I quit today.”

Her roommate cocked her head like some brightly colored bird. “Is that a new way of saying ‘fuck today, let’s get drunk’? ‘Cause I’ve got to leave for work in an hour, so I’m not up for that, but Neel ought to be home soon to babysit your lightweight ass.”

Trisha laughed. “No, I mean I quit. As in, my job.” She deposited the box on the coffee table and lifted out her spider plant. “That’s right, Arachne, no more dim cubicle for you!” She giggled as she swept a little bit of dirt that had spilled onto the rim back toward the center of the planter. “Now, don’t worry, I’ve got a better place in mind for you, but this will do for now.” She carried the plant into her bedroom and started flipping on lights.

Behind her, she heard the door open again, accompanied by Neel’s voice, too quiet to make out his words, but the response was clear enough.

“Neel, I think Trisha’s finally lost it. Do you know her doctor’s number?”

Brandy never had got the hang of whispering, Trisha thought as she hung Arachne by the window. “No, I haven’t!” she called back, testing to make sure the hook in the ceiling, unused until now, would hold. “And I’ve already talked to Dr. Chang about it,” she added, returning to the living room.

“About what?” Neel looked back and forth between the two women.

“I’m leaving Joja,” Trisha announced. “The twenty-fourth’s my last day.”

“Oooookaay?” He drew out the word. “And… what will you do after that?”

A little of her excitement drained away. This was the part she had been dreading ever since she had made her decision. “Well.” She sat down on the armchair, and motioned for Neel to sit as well. “I’m sorry I didn’t discuss this with you in advance, but I’m moving out at the end of the year.”

“WHAT?” Brandy’s exclamation was loud enough that Trisha was surprised none of their neighbors showed up to complain. Neel only stared at her.

“I’m not abandoning the lease—I won’t have a rent payment of my own to deal with, so I can keep paying my share until you find someone to take my room.” She was going about this all wrong. “I inherited some property from my grandfather, and I only found out about it a week ago. I don’t know why he kept it a secret, but he left me a farm over in Stardew Valley District, so I won’t even be all that far away. You can visit me, and I can stop by now and then!” She would still have doctor’s appointments in the city, of course; dyrad syndrome wasn’t something a country doctor could be expected to handle.

“You quit your job, and you’re going to take up farming?” Neel said at last. “If you’ll pardon the expression, you’ve never really had much of a green thumb, despite your thumbs actually _being_ green.”

“I’ll make it work,” Trisha said. “Forgetting to water houseplants as a kid is hardly definitive data, and my spider plant is doing fine, thank you very much. “

“Sure, but when I bought it for you the guy at the garden center said those things have been so gene-tweaked you’d be hard-pressed to kill them with a blow torch, so that’s not really—”

“Neel!” Brandy’s voice was tight. “Our best friend tells us she’s going to walk out of our lives, and you’re worried about the fucking plants?”

“Of course not!” Both women jumped at the sudden shout. He took a deep breath and ducked his head, before saying quietly, “But I’d rather miss her because she’s gone a couple districts away instead of because she’s just… gone.”

It was Trisha’s turn to look away, trying to hide the gathering tears. She thought that, her dramatic fainting spell the previous week aside, she had done a decent job of concealing how bad a toll this Winter was taking on her, but Neel always had been more perceptive than he let on.

Brandy buried her hands in her hair, the pink strands standing out in short tufts between her fingers. “Okay, fuck it, I’m in.”

“What?”

“I’m _in_. On this ridiculous farming thing. I’m going stir-crazy here, ‘cause I can’t do anything fun with the cops and Joja still searching for me. I’ve never heard of any good jump spots in Stardew Valley, but the name implies there are mountains, so I ought to at least be able to go climbing. Maybe do some rappelling. Are there caves? Spelunking always sounded kind of fun.”

“Climb trees, go skinny dipping,” Neel suggested. “Maybe wrestle a bear or two.”

“That last sounds more like your sort of thing.”

He snorted. “Not really how my tastes run, Brandy.”

“Ooh, you should come with us and find yourself a nice lumberjack to cuddle up to!”

“Still not my thing! Give me a break, Brandy, you’ve met my boyfriends.”

“Yeah, and they’re all exes, so maybe—”

“Did I ask for dating advice? What about you, planning to sweep some fresh-faced farm girl off her feet?”

“Ooh, that’s a perk I hadn’t considered. Do you think she’d have freckles? I _adore_ freckles.”

“How would I know? It’s your fantasy, don’t go dragging me into it.”

“Ugh, Neel, way to spoil the mood.”

“You two! S-stop!” Trisha was giggling so hard she was getting short of breath again. “Brandy, it’s so sweet of you to offer, but—”

“Offer! I’m serious, Trisha. You’re not going to keep me from meeting my dream girl, are you?”

Another fit of giggles turned into a cough. When she could speak again, she shook her head. “I wouldn’t dream of standing between you and true love—” she rolled her eyes “—but when I talked to the mayor to make sure the property hadn’t been seized for back taxes or something, he mentioned the farmhouse there is tiny. As in, small enough to make a downtown studio apartment look spacious. And that it has electricity and indoor plumbing, but not much else.” At least Mayor Just-Call-Me-Lewis had assured her it was still there, and hers to claim.

“Hmm, yeah, that could put a crimp in my plans. I’ve heard haystacks aren’t nearly as good a make-out spot as the movies suggest. Maybe she’ll have her own place?”

“I’m not joking, Brandy.”

“Neither am I, at least about coming with you,” her friend said. “The most excitement I’ve had all week is when some asshole tourist at the club tried to start a fight with me _and_ Blake.”

“How many of their bones did you break?” Neel asked, handing Trisha a glass of water she hadn’t noticed him getting up to fetch.

“None! See—this life is making me soft.” She leaned forward earnestly. “If your cottage is really as small as you say, I’m sure I can find a room to rent somewhere. But you two are the only reasons I’ve stuck around Zuzu this long, and no offense, Neel, but I think Trisha’s gonna need me more than you are.”

“No offense, _Neel?_ ” Trisha muttered, but she was smiling as she said it. She had really not been looking forward to leaving everyone she knew behind.

“I can’t argue with that,” the man in question said. “Looking for new roommates sucks, though. Think we could find a two-bedroom rental in a town that small?”

Trisha choked on her water. Brandy, she could picture fitting into a place like Stardew Valley, and better than she herself would, since her friend was the athletic, outdoorsy type. Neel, on the other spent most of his spare cash on fancy restaurants and expensive clothes and theater tickets—when he wasn’t on stage himself, though he hadn't done any auditions in the last year and a half. “You’re not serious!” she managed to gasp at last.

“I think I am, actually,” he said, staring in the general direction of the window, though there was nothing to see but their reflections. One shoulder lifted and sank. “My therapist keeps telling me I need to make some changes in my life. I doubt this is what they had in mind, but… It’s been over a year, and I still keep getting ambushed—running into someone who knew my brother but doesn’t _know_ , or seeing some place we used to go and thinking about how glad he’d be it was still there or how upset that it’d changed or closed. And then—” Another shrug.

He didn’t resist when Brandy scooted closer to him on the couch and put her arm around him. Trisha wanted to do the same, but she was still shaky enough from her brief attempt to breathe water that she didn’t think she could manage even that short a distance. Brandy stroked his hair as he leaned his head into her shoulder “Neel, honey, you know we love you, but ‘small country town’ is not exactly your scene. I mean, even less than ours.”

“Yeah, no kidding. I guess the smart thing to do, if you’re both leaving, would be to apply for a transfer to the Port Ava satellite office or something. But maybe what I need is an actual change, not the same map with different street names.”

“Wait, how exactly did we get from ‘Trisha, this is absurd’ to ‘we, too, have lost every single one of our marbles’ in such a short time?”

Brandy gave her a crooked smile. “We’ve done everything as a team since we were kids, why not go ‘round the bend together, too? Seriously, though, I don’t think either of us has actually been _happy_ with our lives for a while now. This is the kick in the ass to make us _do_ something about it.” Neel pulled away from her, but nodded silently, his gaze still distant.

Trisha took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All right, someone hand me my phone. I guess I’m calling the mayor back to get the scoop on the Pelican Town rental market.”

Said market was, she learned, almost nonexistent and currently at full occupancy, but there were other options, in the form of an agricultural grant program run by the district. “The cabins won’t be anything fancy—they're pre-fab components with minimal customization options, but they’re solid construction and you have plenty of land,” Lewis assured her. “We might even be able to get them in place before you arrive, though I can’t guarantee it—I’m not sure what the weather’s like in Zuzu City, but we’re staring down a blizzard out here.”

As if to punctuate his words, Trisha heard a howl of wind in the background. “I understand—wait, are you outside in that weather? I’m so sorry, I should have asked if this was a good time—”

“Oh, not to worry! I’m simply making a pass through the town, making sure everyone’s prepared. I ought to go, though. The sooner I get the word to Robin—she’s our carpenter, I’ve already had her looking over the old farmhouse—the sooner she can get the ball rolling on construction, even if installation has to wait for Spring. Ack, my hat!” The line went dead, and she stared at the phone for a moment, hoping he had merely dropped the phone, or the connection, and not met with some more serious accident. Then she returned to the living room to tell the others the news. _We’re really doing this, aren’t we?_


	13. 17 Winter Y0 - Lewis

The man clutched a flat cap to his gray hair, defending it from the wind that howled through the branches. Though he liked to think he was in excellent shape for someone his age, he still breathed a sigh of relief when he picked out the lights of his destination through the snowflakes that filtered through the trees.

He didn’t bother to knock on the door; the occupant would have known of his approach long before, even if this visit had been unexpected.

“You’re late, Lewis. Made a stop at the ranch along the way, did you?” The man in the purple and black robes did not look up from the enormous cauldron he was stirring.

“Of course not.” The mayor of Pelican Town crossed the room, skirting the diagram chalked onto the floor and the candles that surrounded it, to hang his snow-sodden hat on the corner of the fireplace mantel. “Though I’ll pay a call there on my way back, to make sure they’re prepared for the storm.”

“And perhaps get snowed in yourself?”

“If she still lived alone, that might be a temptation,” Lewis admitted. “As matters stand now, it would be awkward.” His companion merely snorted, and tossed something else into the iron pot, frowning at whatever he saw there. “Is there trouble brewing?”

The thin attempt at a joke earned him nothing more than a raised eyebrow. “You still haven’t explained your tardiness,” he said, though there was no rancor in it.

“You haven’t already divined the reason?” Lewis said, smoothing his mustache to hide a grin. It wasn’t often he knew something before Rasmodius, and he couldn’t help but savor the moment.

“The spirit realms are… uneasy, tonight, and you were not so late, yet, that I was worried. If not the lady, what kept you?”

“A phone call. There’s no reception out here, so I had to finish it before I could leave the town square. You know I would never miss your birthday.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small object wrapped in a white handkerchief.

His friend’s brow creased, and then his eyes widened as the folds of fabric fell away from the simple wooden box. “A phone call, you said?” He reached out to open the box, though he didn’t lift it from Lewis’s outstretched hand. It was empty, save for faint impressions in the plush lining. Slowly, he drew a chain from around his neck, which held a mismatched pair of keys.

“Yes. I’ve come to ask for those back, my old friend. Patrick’s granddaughter has made a claim to Lockwood Farm.”

“This explains some of the disturbances I have seen, but not all.” He unclasped the chain and reverently placed the keys inside the box. Lewis had no other gift, but the news he had brought and the lifting of this burden would be more precious than any mere object.

“I should clarify that the phone call I received on my way here was the second from her. She isn’t coming alone.”

“A partner? It would be better if she found someone here, but…”

“Perhaps. Two friends—close ones, if they’re following her here on such short notice—but I don’t know _how_ close.”

“Hmm. I shall have to see what the elementals have to say, but this could complicate matters.” He opened a cabinet and began taking out more reagents for his cauldron, and Lewis laid claim to a chair. As the colors radiating from the roiling brew began to shift, he resigned himself to the fact that he might not have time to drop in on Marnie, after all; it looked like the spirits were in a talkative mood, and if more trouble was coming to Pelican Town, he needed to know what shape it might take.


	14. 26 Winter Y0 - Neel

It had been a different restaurant each time, of course; too much of a risk to have a regular meeting place. It didn’t escape Neel’s attention that the locales had gotten more upscale each time, though the current one was the first where he would be in trouble if his “date” ditched him with the bill, and not only because he had used the meeting as an excuse to acquire a new suit. It might not have been the wisest decision, given everything else he had bought for the upcoming move, but the custom-tailored grey wool fit both of the roles he was playing here better than anything he already owned would have. He shrugged off financial concerns and ordered the second-most expensive cocktail on the menu.

His contact arrived not long after his drink, and he gave her a long, appreciative look as she made her way to the isolated booth where he sat. She might have sneered at his wardrobe at their first meeting, but she—or someone connected to her—spoke the language of fashion fluently. Her dress and jacket were _exactly_ on the line between “hot date” and “corporate headhunter,” and she walked as if she ate at the most exclusive restaurant in Zuzu City on a regular basis.

And perhaps she did, because she looked at his glass and said, “I would have expected you to go for the stardrop martini.”

“In my experience, any drink with ‘stardrop’ in its name isn’t worth the taste buds you’ll burn off drinking it,” he said. “The menu description didn’t suggest theirs was any different in that regard.” The gem berry champagne was drier than he preferred—it was one of the few wines that didn’t improve with age, regardless of what the official ratings might insist—but it was an acceptable choice. They made similar small talk until the waiter had taken their order, delivered it, and made the obligatory check to ensure they were satisfied with the meal, at which point Neel’s companion’s remark that they would let him know when they were ready for dessert ensured their privacy.

They had established a script for these meetings; Neel would gripe about his job, she would listen sympathetically, and along the way, a pair of envelopes would be exchanged, the one containing handwritten transcripts of sensitive Joja Corp documents and conversations leaving his pocket and being replaced with one holding an appropriate amount of cash. Upon leaving, he would “forget” some personal item—a glove or a hat—and when he hurried back to the restaurant to retrieve it, a scrap of paper with the location for the next meeting would be tucked inside.

The time for that script was over, though. “Happy Winter Star,” he said, setting a small box on the table between their plates. The logo proclaimed it to be from a jewelry store even more exclusive than the restaurant, and it was her turn to raise her eyebrows, because however generous her payments would have been to a cash-strapped clerical worker, they weren’t enough to have allowed him to shop _there_. Laughing at her expression would not have fit the image they were projecting, so he only smiled and rested his chin on one hand, incidentally shielding his face from the rest of the restaurant. “Don’t read too much into it. Remember whose wastebaskets I have access to.”

The corners of her eyes crinkled in appreciation, and she lifted the lid from the box. From a distance, its contents might well have appeared to come from the store the box advertised, one of their obscenely expensive ornaments in gold and gemstones. Up close, it was clearly a plastic knock-off of the same. “Oh, darling, you shouldn’t have!” She lifted it out of the box as if admiring it, and her face froze when she saw—up closer still—that it was a novelty thumb drive. “You really shouldn’t have,” she breathed, and Neel knew she had just spotted the tiny lettering proclaiming the drive’s capacity. That meant nothing, in terms of its contents—except that this particular novelty came in many different storage sizes, the one he had given her was by far the most expensive, and he had already established that he was not the sort to spend a single coin more than he needed to.

That last was a lie, but the drive itself was not. “I have to leave my phone in a locker and pick it up when I leave, have my pockets scanned every day for anything that might breach security—but nobody looks twice at ‘holiday cubicle decorations.’” The security guard who had cleared the “ornament” when he’d brought it to work had even given him the tip about the VP who’d had the box on her way in, but only the bauble it had held on the way out. He had made sure to go the same guard for the exit check when he had cleaned out his desk two days ago; the man had winked at the box Neel had appropriated from the trash without giving its contents more than a cursory glance.

Reluctantly, the woman across the table lowered the ornament back into the box and gave it a nudge back toward him. “You’re fishing for a big payday. Even if I had some assurance that’s what it looks like, I— _we_ —don’t have that kind of ready cash.”

“Like I said, Happy Winter Star.” Her eyes widened ever so slightly, but her expression didn’t otherwise change. “Dinner’s still on you, but this has never been about the money.”

Her expression hardened. “How do I know this isn’t a trap?”

He leaned back against the plush velvet padding of the booth. “How do I know this isn’t just sordid corporate espionage?” He was certain it wasn’t, but his own resources weren’t good enough for him to determine which of the many activist groups constantly digging for dirt on Joja she was affiliated with.

Her expression turned speculative. “I figured out pretty quickly that our first meeting wasn’t an accident, but I assumed you traced your friend’s contacts to that dive in search of a payout. If not that, what?”

“‘What is Joja hiding?’“ he quoted. The marketing department had earned their holiday bonuses, spinning that hashtag into a teaser for some as-yet-unnamed product launch. It hadn’t worked as thoroughly as last time, since they hadn’t already had something in development that might justify such an elaborate advertising campaign, and speculation still ran rampant online. He tapped the box. “I’ve got a pretty good idea, but no _proof_. That’s all I’m going to be able to get, so I’m turning it over to you. I’m sure I’m not your only source; hopefully you can build the complete picture I’m missing.”

“Afraid if you dig deeper, you’ll get caught?”

“My access couldn’t have gotten me any deeper, no matter what I was willing to risk.” His own access couldn’t have gotten him that deep in the first place, but one of “his” execs was stunningly careless. “No, I’m _out_. If what I think I’m seeing in all that is true… I can’t be part of it anymore.” He hooked the edge of the box with one finger, drawing it a little closer. “There is one thing I want in exchange. Not money,” he said, as she opened her mouth. The cash she’d already given him had gone into a carefully hidden account, just in case he—or Brandy—wound up needing legal representation over this. “Time.”

“You want us to sit on this, if it’s as explosive as you imply?”

He shrugged. “If you drop this all on the internet tomorrow, they’ll figure out where it came from right away. Give it a couple of seasons, and no one there’ll remember my name without checking the employment records, and there’ll have been more staff turnover. A secretary’s the next best thing to invisible, to those people.” He had never minded, for his own sake—had taken pride in his ability to fade into the background—until he had realized the attitude extended to everyone not at their own exalted level, the whole world divided into data points and those few that believed they could manipulate the data.

She nodded slowly. “A raw infodump wouldn’t suit our purposes, anyway, and it’ll take time to cross-check and corroborate.” A little of the tension left his shoulders. “I can’t guarantee you any specific timeline. If this confirms the hints we’ve found elsewhere, adding any gratuitous delay would be unconscionable.”

“Then we’re on the same page,” he said, hearing a harsh note creep into his voice in response to the echo of his own buried, seething anger he could see in her eyes. Then he sat back, forced the fury back down beneath the surface, and smiled. “So… what do you recommend for dessert?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooray, new content update for the game! _Spring Seeds_ is finished except for proofreading, so there probably won't be any 1.5 elements in Part 1 (unless I can find a way to slip something in with minor wording changes), but I may incorporate any interesting bits into the rest of _Gifts of the Valley_ as I write new material.


	15. 28 Winter Y0 - Trisha

A hand on her shoulder startled Trisha out of a convoluted dream involving a chorus line of fruits and vegetables singing about how hard it was to find the balance between too little water and too much. “Time to wake up, sleepyhead! Our stop’s in a couple of miles,” Brandy said.

“Already?” She stretched and looked around. The bus had been half full when they pulled out of Zuzu City’s central bus depot, but she and her friends were the only remaining passengers.

“I think you were out cold before we hit the city limit,” Neel said, slipping a bookmark into the third volume of the sprawling epic fantasy series he had borrowed from her. He had been on the first one when they boarded the bus, and Trisha smiled at yet another sign that he was starting to get back to his old self.

She wasn’t surprised that she’d dozed off, given all the frantic packing and other preparations for the move, but she’d meant to see the city off properly. She gazed out the window as the bus began to slow. As if in apology for its harshness, Winter had departed a little early this year, and the trees and shrubs that lined the road already showed signs of green. She leaned closer to the glass as the bus turned off of the highway and the sunbeam she had been sitting in shifted away.

“Pelican Town, last stop!” the bus driver called as the vehicle came to a halt along the edge of the narrow road. Trisha hauled herself to her feet, then checked to make sure she still had everything she had boarded with. At least napping through the trip meant that she didn’t have to worry about leaving her phone or tablet in the seat pocket. Neel was already pulling her soft-sided cooler from the overhead shelf, and he handed it to her with visible reluctance. Her arm muscles burned as she slung it across her shoulder, but it didn’t weigh that much more than the oversized purse with her electronics and other essentials, so at least she was well balanced. She collected the box that held Arachne, as well.

However, she didn’t argue when Brandy slung her own duffel bag over her shoulder, then took Trisha’s suitcase from the bus driver and kept hold of the handle instead of turning it over to its owner. The clear sunlight was already working its magic, but she wore a thick sweater and loose jeans to avoid shocking the locals, so there was only so much she could take in at once.

“Hello! You must be Trisha?” She jumped a little at the unexpected voice. A tall woman pushed herself away from the fare machine she had been leaning against while they collected their baggage. She had fiery hair partly gathered into a ponytail, a few white strands in it leading Trisha to put her age somewhere around her parents’, and the sort of build that suggested she did a lot of physical labor. Her blue eyes darted between Trisha and Brandy, as if unsure who she was addressing.

“That’s me,” she said, stepping forward. “This is Brandy, and that’s Neel.” The latter had brought along more luggage than both women together, though it would only be a few days before the rest of their belongings were delivered, and he was currently trying to figure out how to manage both rolling suitcases at once on the dirt path leading away from the bus stop.

“I’m Robin, the local carpenter,” the woman said, extending her hand. Trisha shifted her box to free her right hand, steeled herself, and shook Robin’s. The woman wasn’t the sort to make a point of her strength by squeezing, thankfully, but Trisha couldn’t tell whether the way Robin’s eyes widened was due to the thinness of her fingers or their green tint, so obvious against the redhead’s pale skin. “Mayor Lewis sent me here to fetch you and show you the way to your new home. He’s there right now, tidying things up for your arrival. The farm’s right over here, if you’ll follow me.” She started walking, then looked over her shoulder at a muffled curse from Neel. “Would you like a hand with those?”

Trisha turned around in time to see the too-familiar blank mask slip into place to cover the flare of anger in Neel’s eyes, but she doubted their guide noticed, because it was replaced almost as quickly with a sheepish smile. “That’d be great, if you’re sure you don’t mind. I’m afraid I didn’t opt for the off-road models.”

Robin laughed and picked up the larger of the two bags, hefting it by the side handle as if it weighed nothing. “Not at all. Consider it an apology, of sorts,” she added as she led the way toward a wider dirt road. “I’m afraid we weren’t able to get the cabins you ordered built in time for your arrival. We had one snowstorm after another this year, and getting the components down the mountain from my workshop just wasn’t possible. Now that the snow is finally gone, I can get them assembled over the next few days.”

“We ought to be able to manage for that long,” Trisha said, hoping it wasn’t obvious how out of breath she already was. She looked up the trail, where a wooden gate was just visible in the distance, an age-faded sign hanging over it, and despite her exhaustion, her steps quickened of their own accord.

“This is Lockwood Farm,” Robin said, swinging open the gate and sweeping her hand to encompass…

A disaster. Trisha’s stomach sank. What had she expected, when the mayor had told her that the land had been untended since before she was born? Weeds and tall grass were tangled around boulders and fallen logs, and trees ranging from spindly saplings to well-grown pines blocked her from seeing the whole of the property. What might be the shattered remains of a greenhouse caught the late afternoon sunlight off to the west, and a small pond nearby was choked with trash, though the tied-off garbage bags nearby suggested someone had been working to rectify that.

“What’s the matter?” All three of them turned toward Robin. “Sure, it’s a bit overgrown, but there’s some good soil underneath that mess! With a little dedication you’ll have it cleaned up in no time.”

Trisha took a deep breath to steady herself, and with it came a host of smells: pine needles… hints of early spring flowers… a whiff of garbage from the direction of the pond… and under it all, the heady scent of the soil, richer than the store-bought compound in Arachne’s pot. Though it had no scent of its own, she could also feel the sun on her face and hands, welcoming and warm despite the lingering chill in the air. “At least it’s obviously good for plants,” she said, gazing at the thick weeds.

Robin’s smile grew a little less uncertain at that. “And here we are, your new home,” she said, waving at the building Trisha had paid scant attention to, focused as she had been on the land itself.

As if on cue—and perhaps he had been waiting for just such a signal—the door to the little cottage opened and a man stepped out. His hair was iron gray, head and thick mustache alike, and even before he opened his mouth Trisha was certain of his identity; he _looked_ like the voice she had heard on the phone. “Ah, the new farmer!” he said, proving her correct. His nod encompassed all three of them. “Farmers, I should say. Welcome! I’m Lewis, Mayor of Pelican Town. You know, everyone’s been asking about you.” He looked at all three of them—Brandy, her hair freshly dyed for maximum eyestrain; Neel, who had spent the last week and a half alternating between packing and buying a whole new wardrobe (she hadn’t known “designer flannel shirts” were a thing); and… her.

She had been deliberately vague about her health issues when speaking to Lewis, specifying only that it was essential the cottage have at least a small refrigerator, as well as collecting the name and credentials of the town’s doctor. She saw the mayor’s eyes widen as he realized her coloring wasn’t a trick of the light filtering through the trees, and was grateful her baggy clothing hid the worst of the toll the Winter had taken on her. To his credit, he showed little more reaction to her peculiarities than her roommates’ self-chosen ones. “It’s not every day that someone new moves in,” he continued with scarcely a pause. “It’s quite a big deal!”

He turned to face the building “So… You’re moving into your grandfather’s old cottage. It’s a good house… very ‘rustic.’”

Robin snorted. “Rustic? That’s one way to put it. ‘Crusty’ might be a little more apt, though.”

“Rude!” the mayor muttered under his breath, giving the carpenter a sidelong glare. “Don’t listen to her, Trisha. She’s just trying to make you dissatisfied so you’ll hire her to upgrade your house.” The red-haired woman returned the glare, but there was no real hostility in either of them; it felt more like the sort of ‘argument’ Brandy and Neel had on a regular basis. “Anyway… You must be tired from the long journey. You should get some rest. The additional cabins might not be in place, but we managed to fit the beds into your cottage. It’ll be cramped, I’m afraid.”

“Robin warned us about the housing situation,” Brandy said. “I’m just glad to hear we won’t need the air mattresses we brought!” Neel nodded silent agreement, and Trisha sent a brief prayer of thanks to Yoba that none of them snored.

The mayor and Robin both looked relieved at their acceptance of the situation. “Tomorrow you ought to explore the town a bit and introduce yourselves,” Lewis suggested. “The townspeople would appreciate that.” He walked down the steps and pressed the key into Trisha’s palm. The metal had a curious warmth, as if he had been holding it in his hand for a long time. “Well… good luck!” He headed for the gate, and soon vanished into the lengthening shadows of the tree-lined road.

Robin lingered a few minutes longer. “You’ll see the survey markings where I’m planning to put the cabins. Take a look over them tonight or tomorrow morning and let me know which model I should put where, or if you don’t care for the suggested arrangement at all. It might take a little longer if the spots you’d prefer still need to be cleared and have utility hookups run, but despite what _some_ people might imply, I’m really not trying to drum up extra work for myself by giving my customers something they’re not happy with.”

“Thanks, Robin. We appreciate that,” Neel said, heaving the suitcase he was carrying onto the porch. “How do we get to town?”

“Sorry, I’m not much of a tour guide, am I? If you go back the way we came and keep walking past the turn-off to the bus stop, you’ll reach the town square. The beach is south of town, and my place is to the north, about halfway up the mountain. You can also reach me more directly by taking the road just over there.” She waved toward the north edge of the farmland, where the descending sun picked out a gap in the steep hillside. “My kids, Maru and Sebastian, are about your age, and I’m sure they’d be thrilled to meet you. My husband Demetrius, too. In the meantime, let me just show you a few, er, features of the cottage, and then I’ll leave you to get settled in.”

When Robin finally left, Trisha dropped onto the bed shoved into the corner of the room—it looked like the oldest, so she assumed it was the one that belonged to her cottage—with an exaggerated sigh. “When Lewis said Grandpa liked the ‘simple life’ out here, I didn’t realize he meant _this_ primitive.” At least the fact that he had apparently either eaten all of his meals in town or cooked over a campfire didn’t pose too much of an issue for her. The waist-high minifridge could hold a couple weeks’ worth of her nutrient shakes and still have room for Brandy and Neel to store a few things, and Robin had loaned them an electric hot plate so the others could manage simple meals, for now. The propane hot water heater attached to the plumbing would take some getting used to, as would the way walking too close to the television’s wire antenna made the few channels that came in go fuzzy.

Neel had his phone out. “I’ve got a signal, but just barely.”

“Seriously, we never even stayed at a hotel that didn’t at least have cable TV and a hot tub!” She gazed up at the ceiling beams, where a solitary spider was beginning to spin a web, no doubt rebuilding after Lewis’s tidying. Her grandfather’s letter had described this as the place he “truly belonged,” and she was torn between regret that she had never seen this side of him while he was alive and gratitude for the opportunity to learn about it now. Why had he never brought her to visit? Or her mother, for that matter? When she had told her parents she was moving, her mother had been nearly as surprised as she had been; she had known about the farm’s existence, but assumed it was a hobby project-slash-tax shelter he had sold off decades ago. How had her grandfather even come here in the first place? Perhaps Mayor Lewis knew, since the letter had mentioned him fondly.

“Trisha! Hey! Mission Control to Trisha, do you read?” Brandy waved a hand in front of her face.

“What?” She blinked; while she had been lost in thought, the sun had set fully, and Brandy’s face was eerie, lit only by her phone screen.

The other woman shook her head. “I asked if you wanted to see what sort of shows the local broadcast stations have, but you look like you’re already half-asleep.”

“Do we need to set up the lamp you brought with you? I bought a sleep mask, just in case,” Neel said. He had already changed into his pajamas, looking even more out of place in the rustic cabin in striped burgundy satin than he had in his crisp new jeans and plaid shirt.

“I didn’t think to,” Brandy murmured, then added quickly, “Not that I can’t deal with the light, if you need it!”

Trisha combed her fingers through her hair. “I think I’m all right,” she said. “I must have gotten enough sun on the bus and the walk here.” She could feel fatigue tugging at her as she stood and crossed the room, but it was lighter than the bone-deep weariness she had woken up with that morning. She pulled a shake out of the fridge, wondering which of her friends had loaded it while she spaced out. She took a swig from the bottle and then lifted her spider plant from its box. She didn’t see any convenient hooks, so she set the planter on the sturdy wooden table below a window. _Welcome home, Arachne,_ she thought, listening to her friends bicker amiably over the television remote and hoping that this had been the right decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Winter Star—the farmers are finally in the Valley!


	16. 28 Winter Y0 - Sebastian

“Sebby, are you still up?” His mother opened the door without waiting for an answer.

“No, I’ve learned how to code in my sleep,” he muttered from his computer desk. “Of course I am.”

“There’s no need for sarcasm,” she said. “I just wanted to let you know I met the new folks who’ve moved into the old Lockwood farm.”

“Uh-huh.” He fixed a glaring error in a section of code that had supposedly been reviewed by three other people.

“They seem nice, and they’re all about your age. Brandy reminds me a little of Abigail—I think you’d really like her. Do you want to come with me when I start hauling the cabin pieces down the mountain?”

“Kind of busy with my own work, Mom,” he said, ignoring the “subtle” hint and hoping she wasn’t going to take that as an invitation to try to set him up with this “Brandy.”

She sighed. “Suit yourself. I’m planning to invite them to dinner at some point this week, so they’re not living entirely off of whatever they can manage on my spare hot plate.”

He looked up from the screen at that; he wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but at least she wasn’t springing surprise guests on him as they walked in the door. “Okay. I’ll be out on Friday, by the way.” Too much to hope that she’d pick that day for her invitation, since that's when she and Demetrius usually went out, but it was worth dropping a hint of his own.

“I’m glad to hear that! I’m so happy Spring is finally here; it’s not good to stay cooped up inside so much.”

“Uh-huh.” He was going mostly because Sam had threatened a repeat of his birthday “celebration” if he tried to stand him and Abigail up for the fourth week in a row—complete with snowball, and given that this was Sam, he probably _did_ have one stowed in his freezer for just such an occasion. Sebastian had to admit he was looking forward to going out, despite his looming deadlines; Abby had texted him that Sam had been practicing trick shots in his absence, which was always good for a laugh.

His mother sighed again and left him alone at last, closing the door behind her. He lit a cigarette and pulled up the error log again, looking for the next issue to address, but he couldn’t help thinking about the newcomers. Why would anyone leave Zuzu City to come _here_ , when anyone with sense would do exactly the opposite?


	17. 01 Spring Y1 - Brandy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year! Quick reminder, since I think this is the first time specific ages/dates have come up in the story, that I'm using the game's calendar as canon; "a decade" is the equivalent of 3-4 real-world years.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Neel, give me that before you slice your toes off!” Brandy willed her heart to leave her throat and return to its proper place in her chest as her friend looked at her in confusion, the bow saw—thank Yoba!—no longer in motion.

“I’m cutting this log into pieces so we can move it more easily,” he said.

“Yes, and if you really have to brace against something to get better leverage, be sure you’re not pulling the saw _toward your foot_.” He looked down, and she could see the gears finally start turning in his brain. She pulled out her phone and added “coffee” to her shopping list, right under “propane tank (bigger?).” “Also, the handle is on _this_ end, which might make things easier.” She took the saw away from him and turned it around, pointing out the finger-grooves opposite where he had been gripping it.

“Oh.”

She took a closer look at the blade. “Ugh, this thing is so dull it’s useless. Even holding it correctly that’s going to take forever. C’mon, I’ll show you how to swing an axe without hurting yourself.” Another to-do list entry: find out if there was someone in town who could repair tools, or if they would need to scrape together even more cash to replace the more worn ones.

Once she was reasonably sure Neel had the hang of using the small hatchet—it was in better shape than the rest of the tools, and she suspected another quiet “apology” gift from Robin—she crossed the yard to where Trisha was leaning on the hoe. She had managed to turn over a small patch of soil not far from the cottage. “Hey, Brandy, this looks like enough space for those seeds Lewis dropped off.” She wore a cropped halter top and shorts, which was why Brandy had directed Neel’s attempt at playing lumberjack, with its risk of flying splinters and wood chips, well away from her. “What do you think?”

“I think you look like you’re about to fall over, sweetie. Why don’t you sit down for a bit?”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” Trisha said, and plopped down on the grass next to the tilled patch.

“Are you okay?” Brandy lowered herself to one knee beside her friend.

“I’ll be fine,” she replied, closing her eyes and turning her face toward the sun with an expression of tired contentment. “I’m already feeling better than I have in ages, but it’ll take a while to get my endurance back.” She opened her eyes. “Hand me the seeds and the watering can, would you? I can manage that much sitting down, while I catch my breath.”

“Don’t forget to water yourself,” Brandy teased, bringing over a plastic squeeze-bottle along with the rest.

“Yes, Mom.” Trisha rolled her eyes.

Brandy chuckled and surveyed the grounds again. Neel was handling the hatchet better than the saw, though he was going to wear himself out fast if he tried to keep swinging it at his current speed. She hefted the small pickaxe they’d found in the tool shed at the back of the cottage; she could probably break up the smaller stones with it, though she would want something more heavy-duty before tackling the larger boulders that dotted the land. On the other hand… she checked her phone again; it was late enough that the general store ought to be open, and she’d rather take care of that sort of errand before she got too sweaty, especially since there would be no more hot showers until the propane tank was replaced. “I’m going to make a town run. Keep an eye on Neel, and don’t let him try out any new tools until I’m back to supervise, okay?” She pitched her voice loud enough for him to hear, and he flipped her off before he returned to swinging at the log as though it had pissed him off.

Trisha looked up from reading the directions on the seed packets. “Gotcha.” She tore open the first one and shook a few seeds into her hand. They had found the little bundle on the front steps that morning with a note from Lewis that he had forgotten to give it to them the evening before—a little something to get their farm started. Brandy had had to look up what exactly a “parsnip” was, but from what she had read when the data finally trickled in, the fast-growing crop should be difficult to screw up, even for a crew whose sole claim to fame when it came to growing stuff was “have not yet managed to kill an unkillable houseplant.”

By the time Brandy came back out from detaching the empty tank—which had run out while Neel was showering, much to his dismay and Brandy’s annoyance, since she hadn’t had her turn yet—Trisha was carefully poking seeds into the ground as if they might jump back out at her, and Neel was eyeing one of the mid-sized pine trees. “Stick to the deadfall, hon. I’m pretty sure there’s a trick to getting trees to fall where you want them, instead of on you, but I’ve got to look up what it is.”

He made a face at her but leaned the axe against the tree and started gathering up the fallen branches scattered about. Since he was loading them into their only wheelbarrow, she decided to make this a small grocery run—she could carry a full tank and a few other items, but not everything they really needed.

Pelican Town proved to be a quaint little place, more like a movie set than the small towns her folks had come from. Planter boxes dotted the town square; most were empty, but an old lady stood beside one, transferring bright flowers from a cart loaded with starter pots. She did a double-take upon spotting Brandy, but lifted her trowel with a smile and a friendly wave, which Brandy returned.

The general store was easy enough to spot. Robin had assured them, when she had warned that their propane tank was low, that “Pierre’s” should finally have the replacement stock that had been delayed by the storms.

“Behind you!” The sound of skateboard wheels was distinctive, if not something she had expected to hear today, and she sidestepped with a grin as a blur of denim and blond hair zipped by. The skateboarder attempted a kickflip but missed the timing, foot coming down on the edge of the board instead of the surface, and he staggered a few steps before grabbing hold of a nearby lamp post. “Whoops!” The skateboard shot backwards, and Brandy stuck out a foot to keep it from rolling past her.

Its rider swung around the lamp post to face her. “Thanks for catching that.” He was not as young as she had initially thought, maybe a decade or so less than her own 76 years. His hair was longer than hers, and he must go through ten times more product than she did to keep it spiked that high, though he had left it down in the back to fall just past the collar of his well-worn denim jacket. “I haven’t seen you around before—you just passing through, or one of the new farmers?”

He looked completely unfazed that he’d just screwed up a trick in front of someone he’d probably been trying to show off for, which Brandy found a lot more impressive than a successful kickflip would have been. She brought her foot down on the back of the skateboard and caught it near the front wheels with the hand not holding the propane tank. “Option B,” she said, holding out the board. “Name’s Brandy.”

“Sam,” he said, taking it from her with an appreciative grin. “You ride, too?”

“Not since high school,” she admitted. The mischievous sparkle in his eyes dimmed just a little, and she shook her head. “That’s not a dig, just saying I’m out of practice.” Her fathers had given her skydiving lessons as a graduation gift, and after that the skate park near their apartment was pretty dull.

He chuckled. “Me, too, actually. Mom dragooned me into helping her clean out the attic over the Winter and I came across this thing up there. Now that the snow’s finally gone I thought I’d see if I could still get around town without falling on my face.”

She looked down and nudged one of the cobblestones with her toe. “I’m not sure I could’ve managed that much on a surface like this, even back in school—I thought cracks in the sidewalk were a pain!” Her arm was getting tired, and she shifted the tank to the other hand.

“Hey, looks like you’re busy. Sorry to keep you—are you heading to Pierre’s or the JojaMart?”

Her eyebrows rose. “There’s a JojaMart _here_?”

“Yeah, just across the river. They opened last year, and a lot of people are still griping about it, but they come to shop anyway. I work there part time, but between you and me, Pierre’s got better stock, even if his prices are higher.” He looked at the tank. “And I know for a fact we won’t have propane until summer barbecue season.”

“Thanks for the tip. Since I didn’t even know Joja was in town, I’ll stick with the original plan.” She nodded toward the general store.

“Cool. I’ll see you around, then.” He set the skateboard down and pushed off, wobbling on the uneven paving.

Brandy grinned and resumed walking. Pushing open the shop door caused a bell above it to ring—an actual tiny metal bell, not an electronic chime—and she shook her head at the town’s commitment to its image.

A man in glasses behind the counter looked up at the sound. “Hello! Welcome to Pierre’s. Oh, could you please leave the tank outside? I’d be happy to process an exchange, but it’s a safety hazard to have the tanks indoors.”

“Sure,” she said, leaning back through the doorway to set it against the wall beneath a bulletin board. “I need a few other things, as well.”

“Of course! If you need help finding anything, just tell me or my daughter… Abigail? Where are you?” His voice rose louder than she would have thought necessary, given the small size of the store.

“Still stocking shelves, Dad,” said a bored voice from somewhere behind a display of baking supplies. A moment later a young woman emerged, pulling earbuds out of her ears, which explained the shouting. “What’s up?” Abigail’s hair fell to her shoulders in thick, purple waves, and she wore just enough makeup to accentuate her delicate features, which were currently set in a scowl that suggested the job she was doing wasn’t her choice. She wore a tight black top with matching leggings tucked into scuffed brown hiking boots, and over that, a blue men’s dress shirt with the sleeves cut out. The oversized shirt hung almost to her knees and sported a dozen-odd buttons with band logos or snarky slogans; a silver-studded black belt completed the look.

Brandy grinned. She might have joked about farm girls with Neel and Trisha, but this Abigail was more her usual type. Between her and Skateboard Sam outside, she was starting to feel a bit less out of her element. “Hey.”


	18. 01 Spring Y1 - Abigail

Abigail knew she was staring at the woman standing in the middle of her father’s shop, though she hoped she wasn’t being too obvious about it. Her hair was bright pink, and she wore a tank top that matched her hair and a lighter pink windbreaker over faded black cargo pants that were starting to fray at the hems. There was something in her grey eyes that suggested she’d been everywhere and seen everything, and Abigail wondered what stories she might be able to tell. “Hi?” Her father cleared her throat, and she felt her face heat. “I mean, hello! How can I help you?”

The pink-haired woman’s smile widened. “So… we just moved to town, and our coffee pot is on a truck somewhere between here and Zuzu City. Do you have any instant?”

“Sure, it’s over here.” She led the woman into one of the small aisles between the freestanding shelves and nudged her half-emptied box of pancake mixes out of the way. “That’s right… I heard someone new was moving onto that old farm. That’s you?” The woman didn’t look like any sort of farmer to her.

“Well, it’s Trisha’s place. Neel and I came along mostly ’cause roommates who aren’t assholes are worth their weight in iridium—you don’t let them go if you can help it.”

Abigail laughed. “They must be _really_ good roommates if you followed them all the way from Zuzu City to this little backwater.”

“We’ve been best friends since grade school, and the idea of Trisha trying to figure this shit out on her own didn’t sit well.” She shrugged. “Not that I know much about farming—and Neel’s even more out of his depth—but at least we can all be baffled together.”

“Sounds kind of like me and my friends, Sam and Sebastian,” Abigail said. If their “band” ever got off the ground, going on tour with the two of them might be worth leaving the valley, at least for a while.

“Same Sam who nearly ran me over on a skateboard on my way here? Spiky blond hair?”

Abigail giggled. “Oh, wow, don’t tell me he’s actually riding that thing around town. I thought he was kidding! Yeah, there aren’t any other Sams in Pelican Town.” A mutter that might have been “Thank Yoba” came from the general direction of the cash register, reminding her that they had an audience. “Anyway, are you looking for a particular brand?”

“Neel’s going to complain no matter what I get—he’s a coffee snob—but without his morning brew he’s a hazard to himself and everyone around him. You know those shambling zombies in horror movies? Basically that, with better hair and access to sharp farming tools. I will pour the stuff down his throat if I have to.”

Abigail giggled at the image. “I’m not sure Sebastian’s even up to shambling before 10am.” She pulled a box down from the top shelf. “This one has the most caffeine.”

“Thanks. Hmm, that name sounds familiar, too. This lady named Robin met us at the bust top yesterday, and she mentioned him?”

“Yeah, she’s his mother.” She heard her father clear his throat again, and she resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “You need anything else with that? Cream, sugar?”

“Yes to both, but the smallest package of each that you carry. I’ve got to haul a new propane tank back out to the farm, too, so I don’t want to load up with too much else.”

“Sure. Do you want powdered creamer, or the real thing? We’d also be happy to hold your purchases here, if you have other errands to run before you head back or if you need to make more than one trip.”

Her father cut in at that point. “Marnie’s ranch produces the best dairy products in the district, and you won’t find that at JojaMart!” Abigail rolled her eyes.

“Sure, let’s go with the local cows,” the woman said. “Do you know if there’s anyone in town who does metal repair work? Most of the stuff we found in the tool shed is in pretty rough shape, but I think it’s fixable—just not by us.”

“Clint’s the town blacksmith. His shop’s just across the river, north of the library,” Abigail said.

“A library! Awesome, I can poke around there for books on farming. We’ve got almost no cell signal out on the farm, barely enough for a phone call, and trying to load a web page is sloooooow.”

“Yeah, it’s not too bad in town and up on the mountain, but once you get much west of the bus stop it’s like you’re stepping out of the modern world.” That could be an advantage, sometimes, when she wanted to dodge her father drafting her into shelving stuff. She couldn’t help a sigh. “It’s kind of a shame, really. I always enjoyed exploring those overgrown fields by myself.”

The woman grinned at her. “Given our skill level, they’re going to remain mostly overgrown for a while. Feel free to to explore to your heart’s content, or just drop by to say hello.”

“Thanks, I’d like that.” As the woman headed toward the counter with her purchases, Abigail added, “Um, and who would I be saying hello to?”

“Well, shit, apparently I need a caffeine boost, too,” she said, her cheeks flushing nearly as pink as her hair. “I’m Brandy.”

“Well, then, welcome to Pelican Town, Miss Brandy,” her father said, going into full-on salesman mode. “We carry a wide variety of seeds each season, and once your farm is producing crops I’d be happy to purchase them from you at very competitive rates. We pride ourselves on carrying as much local stock as possible! Now, I know you said you wanted to keep your shopping light, but seed packets are quite compact, and we have these _splendid_ tulip bulbs right now…”

Brandy’s grey eyes widened at her father’s sudden sales spiel, and Abigail gave her a sympathetic shrug before returning to her pancake mixes. Once she got the rest of the current shipment unpacked, she could track down Sam and see if his first impression of the new arrivals was as good as her own. She hoped that Trisha and Neel were as cool as their friend.


	19. 01 Spring Y1 - Neel

Neel glared at the sapling, the only obstacle remaining in the path he had cleared between Trisha’s cabin and the first set of survey marks. It was too thin to do any damage even if it landed directly on him, but if Brandy disagreed with his assessment, she would be griping about it for days. He started to raise the axe anyway, but its weight had somehow doubled in the few minutes he had been still. He gave the tree a final frown and retreated to the toolshed.

Someone—presumably Robin or the mayor—had made a cursory attempt to clean it up, but his fingers still came away even grimier than they had been when he hung the axe back on the pegs where Brandy had found it. He grimaced and considered going inside to wash up, but decided he might as well check out what else was stashed in here.

“Brandy said not to touch anything until she got back.” He looked up from the decrepit toolbox he was attempting to pry open and found Trisha leaning against the doorframe.

“No, she said I shouldn’t try to _use_ anything. I’m only taking inventory.” The rusty latch finally gave way, and he lifted the lid. The top tray held a couple of screwdrivers that looked to be in decent shape and a hammer with a wide crack running the length of its wooden handle. The one beneath it was divided into smaller compartments holding an assortment of rusty lumps that had probably been nails, screws, and other small hardware at some point in the distant past.

He set the second tray on the floor beside him and peered into the bottom of the toolbox. “This could come in handy for chasing off crows and other pests,” he said, taking out a slingshot. He pulled back the sling and felt the ancient rubber crackle. “Or… maybe not.” It didn’t resume its previous shape when he let go.

“We’re better off putting up scarecrows and fences than trying to stand guard over the fields around the clock, anyway.”

“I suppose.” She must have decided he didn’t need further supervision, because she went back outside. He dug gingerly through the rest of the crap in the box, but the only things he could see worth keeping were the slingshot handle and the two screwdrivers. The box itself might be salvageable, if there were a way to clean the rust out of the latch and hinges. He set his gleanings on a shelf and returned the rest to the toolbox for now.

The laundry hookups against the wall the shed shared with the house looked new, so at least those shouldn’t be a problem. The large cabinet full of tiny drawers held nothing but dust and the occasional spider, and he didn’t trust the rickety-looking ladder well enough to check if there might be anything of interest on the highest shelves that he couldn’t see from the ground. Probably just more junk, he thought, and smoothed the scowl from his face as he left the shed.

Trisha was sitting on the porch steps, watching her little parsnip patch as if it might start sprouting before her eyes—or as if she didn’t have the energy for anything else. “The seed packets said they grow fast, but probably not that quickly,” he said, burying the sudden spike of anger beneath a gently teasing tone. Winters were always tough on her, but she hadn’t looked this frail since high school.

“I know. But I feel like there’s more I should be doing. Look at all that you and Brandy have gotten accomplished!”

Neel surveyed the area around them. Brandy had trampled down a path through the weeds and tall grass to the small pond, which would make hauling the garbage out of it a little easier, and he had made a decent start on clearing a path around the cottage. On the flip side, his arm muscles felt like overcooked noodles, and he had no idea how far through the tangle of trees and rocks and wild greenery Trisha’s property extended; they had barely made a dent. At least there was no shortage of work to keep him occupied. “We didn’t really do _that_ much. Besides, you handled the important part.” He nodded at the damp soil, marked with a small branch that she had stuck through one of the empty seed packets. “It’s officially a farm now.”

“Assuming anything grows.”

He shrugged. “Farms with crop failures are still farms, but I’m sure the parsnips will be fine.” He could understand her restlessness, though; he was certain if he tried to swing the axe any more today he’d wind up dropping it on his foot, but there was nothing worse than sitting around with nothing to do, and not only because his thoughts inevitably turned down paths his therapist wouldn’t approve of. He pulled out his phone to see how long Brandy had been gone, and the date caught his eye. “You know, with all the scramble to pack and get everything arranged, I completely overlooked that it’s your birthday. I didn’t get you anything.”

Trisha smiled and shook her head. “You’re _here_ , in the wilderness, because I had this ridiculous idea to get out of the city. What more could I ask for?”

Something the carpenter had mentioned the evening before was tickling at the back of his mind. “Didn’t Robin say the beach was south of town? You should go check it out.”

She leaned back on her hands and looked up at him. “You’re sure this isn’t a plan to get me out of the way so I can’t stop you from dropping a pickaxe on your skull?”

“I doubt I could lift it that high, at the moment.” The books he had filched from Trisha’s shelves before she could pack them were a temptation, but he was halfway through the series already; better to save them for when he _really_ needed the distraction, since that was all he had until the cabins were built and the moving truck arrived. But he needed to find _something_ to do… Again, their new neighbor came to mind. “I think I’ll hike up to Robin’s place and let her know the spots she picked out for the cabins are fine, and which one’ll be mine.”

“I should come with you,” she said, though he had seen her eyes light up at the reminder about the beach.

“You should go sunbathing,” he said, more firmly. “Catch up on your reading. Maybe meet a few of the townsfolk.” Her smile faltered a bit at that. “Hey.” He sat down next to her. “It’ll be fine. Lewis and Robin barely blinked, right? And it’s early enough in Spring that you should have the sand to yourself.”

“I’d feel bad about leaving all the work to you—”

“What work? If Brandy’s still got energy after hauling our groceries back, more power to her, but I think we’ve made a good enough start for now. I’m pretty sure I can make it up the road and back, but beyond that?” He shrugged. “Go hit the beach and enjoy your birthday. I’ll finalize things with our friendly local carpenter.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll go get my swimsuit.”

“Let me get cleaned up first, would you?” And maybe change clothes… no, better not, despite the gross way his T-shirt was clinging, sweat-damp, to his back. Clothes were another thing in limited supply until their washing machine and the rest of his wardrobe arrived.

He settled for tossing on one of his new flannel shirts over the tee, a choice he soon came to regret. There was, it turned out, a big difference between walking a mile or two downtown and walking the same distance _up a freaking mountain_. The “road” was uneven dirt with some gravel ground into it, and he had to stop every few minutes to catch his breath. Each time he did, all the anger and doubt he was trying to get away from came rushing back—had this been the right decision? Should he have swallowed his rage and stayed at Joja, trying to dig deeper into the rot at the company’s core? No, Trisha _needed_ him, and it would only have been a matter of time before he tripped over some security protocol or otherwise gave himself away, and maybe spoiled everything in the process. But he hadn’t found _proof_ —

He forced his hands to unclench and his feet to begin moving again, focusing so intently on each step that he nearly walked into the side of Robin’s house when he finally reached it—at least, he hoped it was hers, not a neighbor’s. He took the time to straighten out his expression before he ventured around to the front.

Through the diamond-paned glass in the front door, he could see a counter and cash register, and the newly familiar red-haired woman standing behind them meant he was in the right place. He tapped on the door and opened it.

Robin looked up as he entered. “Hello, Neel! Welcome to the shop. Did you have any trouble finding me?

“Finding, no. Getting here?” Despite waiting, he was still wheezing. “ _Why_ do you live on top of a mountain?” he asked as he reached the counter.

She smiled. “We’re hardly at the top, but the view over the valley is pretty incredible. Did you have a chance to go over the survey marks?”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m here. They look fine to us, so you can get started whenever’s convenient. Brandy wants the spot closer to Trisha’s cottage, so I’ll take the other.”

“Fantastic. Since I’ve got you here, why don’t we go over a few of the minor options for your place?” She opened a laptop next to the register and pulled up some sort of blueprint program. “I’d offer to introduce you to my family, but Demetrius and Maru are out collecting samples, and I don’t think Sebastian’s up yet.”

“Some other time then… uh… do I smell coffee?” The aroma drifting in from somewhere beyond the shop was unmistakable.

Robin laughed. “Would you like some?”

“I don’t want to impose…”

“It’s no trouble. My son practically lives on the stuff, so we’ve always got a pot going.”

“Then I’ll take you up on that offer. I think we all forgot when we chose what to pack for the truck versus in our luggage that there wasn’t going to be a café on every corner.”

“You can buy a cup at the saloon in town, but Gus doesn’t open until noon,” she told him. “Please, help yourself—Just go down this hall, and the kitchen is on your right.” She pointed but remained behind the counter.

It felt odd to wander by himself through the house of someone he barely knew—another difference from city life, he supposed—but he found the kitchen easily enough. Locating a mug to use was more of a challenge, since most of the ones in the glass-doored cabinet featured carpentry tools or science puns, clear signals that they belonged to someone in particular. He finally spotted a couple of plain black cups near the back of a shelf and filled one of them. He wasn’t sure if it was his desperation for caffeine speaking or if Robin’s family had found a truly superior strain of coffee bean, but the dark brew smelled almost good enough to drink black.

Almost. He found milk in the fridge and an actual pottery sugar bowl on the table, and he had just raised the mug to his lips when a voice from behind him nearly startled him into dropping it.

“Who are you, and why are you drinking my coffee?”

Neel turned around. A tall man about his own age was framed in the doorway. Despite the accusation in the words, he didn’t look upset, only confused to find a stranger in his kitchen. Judging by the bleary expression, faint trace of stubble, and black bathrobe worn over faded black sweats, he had just stumbled out of bed at… eleven in the morning? “There’s still plenty in the pot,” Neel offered by way of apology. He took a sip at last; it was even better than it had smelled.

The taste cleared some of the lingering fog from his brain, and he realized he hadn’t answered either of the man’s questions. “I’m Neel. I came up to finalize some construction details with Robin, and she took pity on my caffeine withdrawal. Our coffee maker is still in transit.”

“Oh.” With another nonplussed glance in his direction, Sebastian—he hadn’t introduced himself, but based on Robin’s vague description he assumed this was her son—stepped past him and took out the last of the plain mugs. “You just moved in, right? Cool.” He raked a hand through disheveled black hair and picked up the coffee pot. Neel started to move away from the fridge, but apparently the coffee _was_ good enough to drink black, because the man took a long sip, then topped off his mug and turned away. He stopped in the doorway and looked back over his shoulder. “Of all the places you could live, you chose Pelican Town?” His tone suggested he would rather be anywhere else, and he was gone before Neel could figure out a response.

 _That could have gone better._ He hoped Trisha and Brandy were having better luck with Lewis’s “meet the townspeople” suggestion than he was so far. He took another gulp of coffee and returned to the shop.


	20. 01 Spring Y1 - Trisha

The town square was almost empty when Trisha reached it, but her hope that she might cross the cobblestones unnoticed was dashed when one of the two women chatting in the corner of the square spotted her. “Hello!” The other turned and waved, leaving her no polite option but to walk over to them.

Her reluctance faded a bit as she got close enough to realize that the one who had called out to her wasn’t wearing a scarf or hat, as she had initially thought; her hair was the same cheerful green as the grass in the little park she stood next to. Perhaps she wouldn’t stand out as badly here as she had feared. “Hello.”

“You must be Trisha, the new farmer. I’m Caroline. My husband runs the general store here, and we met your friend Brandy when she came in a little while ago. Have you met my daughter, Abigail? She’s the pale one with the purple hair.”

Up close, she could see that the roots of Caroline’s hair were light brown. Brandy was going to fit right in here; could she pass off her own hair as dyed? “Yes, I’m Trisha, but I haven’t had a chance to meet many people yet.”

“Oh! You aren’t exactly how I’d imagined… but that’s okay!” The other woman had reddish blond hair tied into a thin braid. “I’m Jodi.”

“It’s nice to meet you.” Trisha tried not to read too much into Jodi’s comment, but she was painfully aware of the acid-green beach towel she had draped around her neck in the hope of staving off the inevitable questions for a little while longer. She cast around for something neutral to add. “Pelican Town certainly is lovely.”

Jodi smiled warmly at her. “It’s a quiet little town, so it’s very exciting when someone new moves in! Having a farmer around could really change things.”

Ah. Perhaps that explained her remark. Trisha had changed into her bathing suit and thrown a loose cotton dress on over it as a cover-up; she doubted she looked much like anyone’s idea of a farmer, even if the long sleeves and ankle-length skirt hid how completely unsuited to physical labor she was at present. “Well, we’ve got our first crop in the ground, such as it is,” she said with a smile. “With any luck we’ll have parsnips soon.”

“If you’re growing more than you need for yourselves, be sure to bring them to my husband, Pierre,” Caroline chirped. “We carry a lot of local produce. And remind me to send you my secret recipe for parsnip soup—Pierre doesn’t care for it, silly man, but it’s been a winner with everyone else who’s tried it.”

“That sounds lovely,” said Trisha, not mentioning that she didn’t have a kitchen, or that the last time she had tried to eat any sort of soup she had spent the next several hours regretting her existence. Perhaps it could be cooked on a hot plate, and Brandy and Neel would like it.

“So where are you off to?” Jodi asked.

Trisha patted the towel around her shoulders. “I thought I’d check out the beach,” she said. “I used to love to read by the ocean, when my grandfather would take me there on vacation.”

“We do have a lovely stretch of coastline,” Caroline said. “It’ll be a bit chilly this early in Spring, though.”

“Oh, after the Winter we had in Zuzu, it already feels like Summer to me,” Trisha said with a laugh. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“If you say so,” Jodi said skeptically. “Do take care.”

“The bridge over there will take you right to the sand,” Caroline added, confirming Robin’s directions.

“Thanks! I’ll see you around.”

She reached the bridge without further encounters, though she glimpsed Brandy disappearing into a building on the far side of another bridge. She considered following her, but the faint sound of waves on the shore was too alluring.

The river that ran through the town emptied into the ocean. She could see a tantalizing glimpse of tide pools on the far side, but the bridge that had once spanned the widening watercourse had collapsed, and the river was much too deep to wade across and too fast for swimming. There was a building on the pier on her side of the beach, but she found a faded note attached to the door proclaiming that the fish and bait shop’s owner was at sea. The only other structure looked to be a boat shed, judging by the battered rowboat hauled up next to it and the other nautical detritus hung above the door.

The beach itself was deserted, just as Neel had predicted. _Perfect._ She studied the tideline for a moment before choosing a spot to spread out her towel, then set her bag down beside it and pulled out her tablet. Her waterproof case was with the movers, since she hadn’t expected to need it so soon, but she had scrounged up a clean zip-top bag large enough to hold the device, and that would protect it from sand and any rogue splashes of sea water. She took one more look around and pulled off her cover-up, kicked off her shoes, and lay down on her stomach. As the sun soaked in, she pulled up the book she had been meaning to get to for weeks.

The writing was as good as the reviews had promised, and she was soon so engrossed in the memoir that she didn’t pay any mind to the sound of a door opening and closing, or the faint whisper of sand shifting beneath someone’s feet, until a baritone voice broke her concentration. “Er, pardon me, miss?”

Trisha let out an embarrassing squeak and nearly dropped the tablet. She looked up toward the speaker. The man’s red-gold hair fell in slight waves past his broad shoulders, framing high cheekbones and a determined chin. He wore a red corduroy tailcoat with a wide, loose tie in a shade of green that matched his eyes. It looked almost like a historical costume, and she wondered, for a fleeting moment, if Neel had arranged for one of his theater friends to come all the way out here as a prank. This wasn’t someone she had seen in any of the plays she and Brandy had been dragged to, and anyway she didn’t think Neel had kept in touch with that crowd when he had stopped doing auditions.

Which meant that either Jodi and Caroline had neglected to mention a movie being filmed on the beach, or this was one of her new neighbors. _Oh, my. Happy birthday to me._


	21. 01 Spring Y1 - Elliott

Elliott sighed with relief when the timer on his phone chimed; he had promised himself he would write for two hours this morning regardless of how little he felt like it, and the time was finally done. He had more pages filled than he had when he started, though he still hadn’t figured out how Commander Yutkin and the Yazzan consul could have encountered one another prior to the story’s beginning, which the plot required them to have done. And now, as a reward, a walk on the beach, pleasant return to the routine Winter had interrupted. He slipped on his shoes, checked his hair in the mirror, and grabbed his favorite jacket from its hanger by the door as he stepped outside—

Where he paused, for young women in bikinis were not a usual feature of this beach, particularly not on still-cool mornings in early spring.

She didn’t react when he let the door close behind him, and he took a moment to study her as he shrugged into his jacket. She lay prone on an eye-searing green beach towel, propped on her elbows and gazing into an electronic tablet. It was difficult to be certain, since from where he stood the screen was distorted by the plastic bag it was sealed into, but he thought she might be reading a book on it. A canvas bag beside her had a pair of sandals and bundle of cloth that might be a dress or other cover-up sticking out of it, which at least suggested she had not materialized out of the aether or washed up from the sea. Was she a tourist, perhaps—though it wasn’t really the season for such—or one of the new farmers whose impending arrival had the whole town buzzing?

In either case, she would likely think him some manner of creep if she were to find him staring at her, so he had best make his presence known in a more courteous manner. She paid no heed as he walked closer, and he felt his brows draw together as he got a better look, for she was so thin that a strong breeze off of the ocean might carry her away. “Er, pardon me, miss?”

He had not intended to sneak up on her, but footfalls on sand made little noise; she gasped and fumbled with her tablet. She lowered the device to the towel and half turned on the blanket, pushing herself up with one arm and looking up at him… and then further up, as he fought the instinct to slouch. She was lying down, he was standing; stooping would not negate the height difference enough that he would not be looming over her. He opened his mouth to apologize but she beat him to it.

“I’m sorry, is this a closed set? I didn’t see any signs…” Her voice was a breathy alto, her wide eyes a striking hazel, and her words didn’t quite make sense.

“It’s a public beach,” he offered, deciding she must be worried about trespassing. “I’m sorry if I startled you; I hadn’t expected to see someone out here.”

She sat up on the blanket, and he saw her eyes trace his footprints back to the cabin. “Oh! I didn’t realize anybody lived there. I assumed it was a boathouse.”

“I believe it may at one point have been just that,” he said, “though Willy had it remodeled as a rental property some time ago. It’s in rather better shape on the inside than its outward appearance might suggest.

She smiled. “I’ve always loved the seashore. I was so happy to learn Grandpa’s farm was in a coastal town, but to actually live so close to the ocean must be wonderful.”

“Ah, then you’re the new farmer we’ve all been expecting… and whose arrival has sparked many a conversation!” He could have kicked himself as her smile dimmed; few people liked to hear that others had been talking about them behind their backs, even if only in speculation. “I’m Elliott. I’ve been renting this little cabin on the beach for the last year, and based on my own experience, any newcomer is bound to be the talk of the town for a while. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Trisha,” she said, gathering her legs under her and reaching up toward him. “Mind giving me a hand up?”

“‘Tis no trouble at all,” he assured her absently, as he wracked his brain for a mnemonic that might enable him to remember her name.

Her request for assistance appeared more for balance than strength, for she barely pressed down on his hand with her slender fingers, but swayed on her feet for a moment after she rose. “Are you all right?” he asked, for the greenish cast to her face he had assumed was a reflection from the too-bright beach towel had not diminished with distance from it.

She withdrew her hand, which he had not noticed he still held, and her expression grew more closed still. “I… will be,” she said.

“My apologies—you seemed a little unsteady, is all.” Her hair, which he had initially thought black, was green as well, a darker shade than the shopkeeper’s wife dyed hers, a combination that gave him a chill that had nothing to do with the brisk Spring breeze.

A tense ghost of her earlier smile appeared. “It’s okay. I had a bit of a health scare this Winter. I’m on the mend, but I still get light-headed sometimes.”

“I didn’t intend to pry,” he said. The problem must have been serious, to leave her so gaunt, but it was just as plain that she didn’t wish to discuss the details, something with which he could fully sympathize.

She waved a hand in dismissal. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not like it isn’t obvious, though so far people have been polite about it.”

He still felt badly for bringing it up, and feared that his own unease might have shown. “I should leave you to your reading,” he said. “I needed to stretch my legs for a bit, but now my work calls.”

“Oh? What do you do?”

“I’m writing a book, or at least attempting to. I came to the countryside to get away from the bustle of the city, so I could focus on my literary efforts.”

“Then I’m sorry to be distracting you like this.”

“Not at all—finding you here was unexpected, not unwelcome.” _Unexpected… Hmm._ Something else the woman had said tickled at his brain, the question that hadn’t quite made sense. _What if the consul had encountered Commander Yutkin somewhere she didn’t realize she wasn’t supposed to be? A chance encounter with a lost tourist when he was still a junior officer?_ “That could work…”

“What could?”

He hadn’t realized he had spoken aloud, and he felt his cheeks grow warm. “I beg your pardon; sometimes the muse strikes without warning. Please excuse me; I need to find a pen…”

Half an hour later, he had filled more pages with notes on the characters’ backstories than he had in the entirety of his earlier writing session. _I shall have to thank her for the inspiration, however unintended_ , he thought, and groaned when he realized that he had—of course—forgotten her name.


	22. 02 Spring Y1 - Neel

Neel had thought his muscles were sore when he had collapsed into bed the night before, but when he woke up the next morning, he discovered that he had barely understood the meaning of the word.

“I told you not to push yourself that hard,” Brandy said in response to his groan as he tried to sit up. “It’s not like there’s a burning need to clear the entire property as soon as possible.”

“She’s right,” Trisha added, emerging from the bathroom and unwinding a towel from around her hair. She was dressed in just a sports bra and shorts, but it was her yoga mat, not more clothing, that she dug out of her suitcase. “Brandy, would you spot me? I want to get some practice in before Robin gets here, but my balance is still shaky.”

“Sure, sweetie,” the other woman said, before turning back to him. “I made pancakes—they’ve gone cold, but if you toss them back on the hot plate for a minute they should still be good. And try not to use all the propane when you shower, this time.”

Neel lay in bed for a few more minutes after the two departed, but finally convinced all of his limbs to move well enough to stagger into the bathroom. A hot shower went a long way toward loosening his stiff muscles, though he turned off the water a lot sooner than he would have preferred, as his thoughts kept drifting away from farm chores and toward darker memories. By the time he finished dressing, he was so hungry that he didn’t bother trying to reheat the pancakes, washing them down with the horrible instant coffee Brandy had foisted on him and making a mental note to ask Robin where she bought her beans.

He stepped onto the porch and found his friends there waiting. “Here, you should look into this,” Trisha said, holding out a piece of paper.

It was a hastily scrawled letter from someone named Willy, inviting them—well, someone; the greeting was simply “Hello there”—to visit him at the beach. “Okay, but they’re probably expecting you,” he said.

Trisha shrugged and combed her fingers through her now-dry hair. She had added loose-fitting sweats over her workout gear, no doubt in anticipation of the carpenter’s arrival. “Maybe. The envelope just said ‘the farm.’ I want to do a better survey of the land, since I didn’t have the energy for it yesterday, and Brandy’s going to give me a hand. You should probably take it easy today, and you haven’t had a chance to check out the town yet, so we decided you’d be the best one to go.”

“And what if he’s an old friend of your grandfather’s, looking to meet you specifically?” Inwardly, he sighed and resigned himself to the task; the two of them weren’t nearly as subtle as they thought when they were trying to get him to do something “for his own good.”

“Then you can come back and tell me so,” Trisha said.

“There’s a library,” Brandy added. “Bigger than I expected, for a town this small. It used to be a museum, too, but the guy running the place said the last librarian stole all the displays when he skipped town.”

Neel’s eyebrows rose at that; he supposed every place had its drama, but that sounded… extreme.

“I thought that might grab your attention,” Trisha said. “The library’s across the river near the beach, so you can check it out after you talk to Willy, if you want.”

“I guess I’d better get started, then,” Neel said, dredging up an unfelt smile before trudging off toward Pelican Town.

Getting such an early start may have been a mistake, he thought as he looked around the deserted square. He hadn’t paid much attention to the time when he’d gotten up, but it was now just shy of eight o’clock and nothing was open yet. He yawned and started across the cobblestones; he could at least get the lay of the land. As he passed a brick building with a hand-painted sign proclaiming it to be “The Stardrop Saloon,” he discovered that he wasn’t the only one stirring, after all.

Neel altered his course toward the dark-haired man trudging across the square. Maybe he could get a read on whether this Willy guy had sent them a personal note or a sales pitch by asking around. “Good morning! Do you—”

The man’s head jerked up, and his glare stopped Neel in his tracks. “I don’t know you. Why are you talking to me?” he growled.

“You always greet new neighbors like that?” Neel snapped back, trying to rein in a surge of anger as he realized the man’s jacket featured the JojaMart logo.

“Whatever,” the man, whose name badge read “Shane,” muttered. “I don’t have time for this shit, or I’ll be late for work.” He ducked his head and hurried past Neel, who turned to stare after him and spotted a too-familiar sign peeking through the trees across the river.

Joja really was everywhere, he thought with a scowl, wishing Trisha or Brandy had thought to mention that fact yesterday. No doubt they thought he would consider it a _good_ surprise.

He turned his back on this unexpected intrusion of his old life into the new and reminded himself that rank-and-file employees like the one he had just met had nothing to do with the corruption he had stumbled across at the corporate level.

The only signs of life when he arrived at the beach were a small flock of seagulls squabbling over something on the sand and a man with grizzled brown hair who was smoking a pipe at the end of a pier. The latter turned in response to Neel’s footsteps on the weathered wood planks. “Ahoy there, son.” He wore a slouching cap and a shapeless red coat, both of which bore signs of careful mending.

“Hello,” Neel said, tucking his hands into his jeans pockets to shield them from the brisk, damp breeze. “Are you Willy? We got a letter at the farm…”

The weathered lines around the man’s eyes deepened as he smiled and nodded. “Heard there were newcomers in town… Good to finally meet ya.”

“We’ve only been here a couple of days,” he said. “I’m Neel, by the way.”

“Ah,” Willy said, before taking another draw on his pipe. “I’m still tryin’ to unwind from a season out on the salty seas… Lewis mentioned you folks had moved into Pat Lockwood’s old place, so I figured I oughta pay my respects. If you’ll forgive my sayin’ it… you don’t look much like the old man.”

Neel shook his head. “No reason I would—he was my friend Trisha’s grandfather. Did you know him well?”

Willy shrugged. “Well enough to talk to, but he didn’t spend a lot of time in town, and I was at sea a lot more often back then, ‘cause my Pappy still ran the shop. Now I only get out on the waves every few years.” His gaze turned wistful as he looked out over the choppy waters.

“Was it a good trip?” Neel asked, since the man seemed to be waiting for a response from him.

“It was a big haul! I sold a lot of good fish. Big catch like that’ll keep the lights on in the shop for a few more years, and I even saved enough to buy me a new rod.” He picked up a fishing pole from the bench on the pier and held it out. “Here, I want you folks to have my old fishing rod. It’s important to me that the art o’ fishing stays alive. And hey, maybe you’ll buy somethin’ from the shop once in a while.”

“I’ve never fished,” Neel admitted as he accepted the odd housewarming gift. “Pretty sure Trish and Brandy—that’s our other friend—haven’t, either. Trips to the shore when we were kids were generally about splashing in the waves, not trying to catch dinner.”

Willy brows knit at that. “If nobody’s mentioned it to ya, the ocean around here’s not safe for swimmin’—the currents are somethin’ fierce—so stick to the lakes if you’re minded to take a dip. There’s good water here in the valley, though. All kinds o’ fish. Oh, yeah—my shop’s back open now, so come by if you need supplies. I’ll also buy anything you catch. ‘If it smells, it sells.’“ He chuckled. “That’s what my ol’ Pappy used to say, anyway.”

“Well, that’s good to know,” Neel said, making a note to tell Brandy about the currents. Money was going to be tight for a while, and whether they ate the fish or sold them, anything that would help stretch their budget wouldn’t hurt. Assuming they could catch anything at all. “So… how do I use this?”

Will grinned and showed him how to bait the hook and cast the line; when something started tugging, he talked Neel through reeling it in without putting so much tension on the line that it snapped. “Hey, not bad for a first try,” he said as Neel inspected the still-twitching sardine.

“It’s not something I’d want to eat, though,” Neel said. “How much would this go for?” They settled on a price, and he caught a few more of the small silver fish before his arms and shoulders began to protest. “Thanks for the pole and the lessons,” he said as Willy showed him how to break the rod down into its storage case. As he turned to leave, he saw that they had gained an audience of sorts, though the man standing on the other end of the pier didn’t seem to be paying attention to them. Instead, he stared out over the ocean, long reddish hair blowing gently in the breeze like something out of a shampoo commercial. “Who’s that?”

“Name’s Elliott,” Willy said. “I fixed up my old boathouse as a rental cabin a couple o’ years ago, and he’s my first tenant. He’s a bit of an odd duck—some kinda writer, always goin’ on about muses and plot twists and whatnot—but he’s a decent fellow.”

The man looked the part of an eccentric author, Neel thought—perhaps a little too well, like he’d copied his outfit from some historical portrait without stopping to consider whether it made sense for living on the beach, or in the current century.

As if sensing their regard, Elliott turned toward the two of them and raised a hand in greeting, but returned to his contemplation of the waves without coming over to say hello. Neel opted not to risk disturbing his creative process—or posing, whichever—and headed back into town.

The library was a pleasant enough place, though the librarian was quick to apologize for the empty museum displays and gaps in the bookshelves. Neel considered settling in to read for a while, but the arrival of a pair of energetic children and a red-haired woman with the look of a harried schoolteacher made the idea less appealing. Instead, he checked out a book on fish from this part of the world and left.

The town was considerably more lively at this hour, and by the time he made it across the square he had been stopped by so many people wanting to introduce themselves that it was tempting to emulate the first guy he had met and tell them to leave him alone. Since that would not be great for Lockwood Farm’s image, he smiled and added names and faces to his mental roster, along with any bits of information that might be useful to Trisha as she made plans for her—their—new career in agriculture.

In the process, he discovered that many of his new neighbors weren’t any happier about the JojaMart’s presence in town than he was. Was it only his imagination that the disquiet ran deeper than the usual resentment over the chain’s tendency to drive out local businesses?


	23. 03 Spring Y1 - Brandy

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Robin asked Trisha as Brandy snagged her windbreaker from a peg by the door.

Brandy knew Trisha’s yawn was exaggerated, but she doubted Robin could tell. “I’d love to, but I’m so exhausted that I doubt I’d be very good company,” she said. “I’m going to read for a while and then turn in early.”

Neel opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking at the pointed look Brandy shot him behind the carpenter’s back. Trisha had turned down the invitation to join Robin and her family for dinner at the local saloon to avoid the inevitable questions about why she wasn’t eating anything, but Neel didn’t have that problem. He had done a decent job of acting like a functional human whenever Robin had taken a break from putting their cabins together and come over to chat, and from what she’d seen in the last season or so, the more he played that role, the more real it became. No way was she letting him skip out tonight with the same excuse as Trisha, even though he’d been pushing himself so hard it was probably closer to true for him.

“Enjoy your book, Trish, and we’ll try not to wake you up if you’re asleep by the time we get home.” She grabbed Neel’s arm and hauled him onto the porch. “Let’s go—I’ve really worked up an appetite!”

The Stardrop Saloon was what all the “folksy” chain restaurants in the city tried and failed to be. A jukebox old enough that it used actual records played cheerful country music, and a middle-aged man with thinning brown hair and a mustache even thicker than the mayor’s looked up from polishing the long, age-scarred bar counter as they stepped inside. “Robin! Welcome in! Demetrius and Maru already claimed a booth for the lot of you.” His smile widened as his eyes shifted to Brandy and Neel. “Well, hello there! I’m Gus, chef and owner of the Stardrop Saloon. Feel free to stop in whenever you need refreshments—I’ve always got hot coffee and cold beer at the ready.”

“Fabulous,” Neel said, flashing the man his most charming grin. “I’d love a cup of the former. All I’ve had all day is _instant_.” He gave Brandy a look of disgust.

“You’re the one who packed the coffee pot for the movers, hon,” she said with a grin. Even if it was mostly an act, it was nice to see the old Neel again.

Gus chuckled. “I’ll have Emily bring it to your table while you look over the menu.”

Robin led them to a booth next to a giant wooden bear, where a couple of extra stools had been pulled up. One of the benches was occupied by a man about Robin’s age and a pretty, younger woman who was obviously related to him. The man beamed at them as Brandy and Neel slid into the other bench and Robin claimed a stool. “Greetings! I’m Demetrius, local scientist and father, and this is my daughter Maru.” He patted her shoulder.

“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you!” Maru said with a wide smile. Like her father, her skin was darker than Neel’s, though her hair was straight and a dark reddish-brown instead of tightly curled black. “You know, with a small town like this, new faces can really alter the community dynamic. It’s exciting!”

“Well, I’m all for excitement. Brandy,” she said, shaking each of their hands in turn.

“Neel,” her seatmate added. “Trisha sends her apologies—she’s been working as hard as the two of us put together and didn’t feel up to a trip into town.”

“I’m sure she’ll be happy to meet you some other time,” Brandy added, resisting the temptation to prod back at Neel’s words. He wasn’t wrong, exactly, if you were only looking at their relative strengths, but he was the one who’d been pushing himself to exhaustion since they’d gotten to the valley.

Robin glanced at the single empty stool beside her. “Is Sebastian not coming, either?”

Demetrius shook his head. “Too busy with ‘work,’” he said, in a tone that suggested this was as truthful an excuse as Trisha being “too tired” to go out to eat.

Robin’s lips pursed at that, but then she smiled at her guests. “My son does freelance computer stuff,” she said. “Be sure to keep him in mind if your farm needs a webpage!”

“Will do,” Brandy said. “So, what’s good here?”

“Everything,” Demetrius assured them. “Gus is a marvelous chef—an excellent brewer, as well.” They discussed the menu for a few minutes before deciding on a couple of pizzas to share. As they hashed out toppings, a steaming mug of coffee was placed in front of Neel, and Brandy leaned around her friend to discover that Pelican Town was even more blessed in the hot girls department than she had realized.

“That’s one coffee—what can I get for the rest of you tonight?” The woman’s golden brown eyes and sapphire blue hair almost glowed in the saloon’s warm lighting. As they gave their drink orders, Emily gave each one of them her full attention—was it only her imagination that the stunning waitress’s dimple deepened as she turned to Brandy?

“I’ll try the local pale ale,” she said.

“Excellent choice,” their server chirped before turning to Neel. “How about you?” The room felt chillier without that sunny smile on her, and Brandy tried to tell herself not to read too much into it. Even if Emily was interested, none of the bartenders and waitstaff she’d known had liked being hit on at work.

“Just the coffee, but could I get some more sugar?” Neel had already added a dash of cream and both packets from the little tray Emily had brought with the mug.

“Sure thing—how much?”

“All of it,” Brandy said before he could respond, and was rewarded with delightful giggles from Emily _and_ Maru, and a half-hearted glare from Neel. She couldn’t resist needling him a little further. “Well, I guess a whole bag wouldn’t fit in the cup. Maybe just half of one?”

“A couple more would be fine,” Neel said, pointedly not looking at Brandy.

Emily laughed again, but took their pizza order and returned a minute later with a small basket full of sugar and other sweeteners. “In case you want a refill, or anyone else wants coffee later,” she said in response to Neel’s cocked eyebrow, setting the basket in the middle of the table—but she winked at Brandy before returning to her post behind the bar to prepare the rest of their drinks.

To her disappointment, it was Gus who brought out the pizzas a bit later, but by then she had learned that Maru had a sly sense of humor. Between the two of them, they even managed to get a rise out of Neel—for real, not show—once or twice. By the time most of the food had been devoured, with the leftovers assigned to the farmers “to take home to Trisha,” Brandy was no longer uncertain about whether Maru returned her interest.

As cute as the younger woman was, Brandy also found her gaze being drawn back to the saloon’s dazzling bartender. And then there was Abigail, though like with Emily she wasn’t sure whether her friendliness had been more than customer-service cheer. She smiled into her ale as Robin and Demetrius left the table to dance to a favorite song that had come up on the jukebox; none of the women she had met here were anything like the freckle-faced farm girl she had joked about back in the city, but she wasn’t complaining.

When she lowered her glass, she found Maru looking at her and Neel with a more serious expression. “What’s on your mind?” Brandy asked.

“Um… I didn’t want to say it in front of Mom, but what she said about Sebastian? Do _not_ ask my half-brother to build you a website. I’m not sure exactly what kind of programming he does, but he’s not a web designer, and he gets grouchier than usual when people assume he is.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” Neel said, adding a fifth packet of sugar to his second cup of coffee. Or was it a sixth?

Brandy decided she’d ribbed him about his sweet tooth enough for one evening and turned back to Maru instead. “So, what do folks around here do for fun and excitement?”

“I guess it depends on who you ask,” Maru said, pushing her glasses higher on her nose. “A lot of people go hiking in the forest west of town or in the mountains by us. The beach is pretty nice, too, but if you want to go swimming, stick to the lake by our place or the pond in the woods.

“Willy mentioned something about the currents being too strong,” Neel put in, and Maru nodded.

“There are some nasty riptides and that sort of thing, even when everything looks calm.”

“What about climbing?” Brandy asked. “I love rock walls at the gym, but I’ve never had the chance to try the real thing.”

“I’d advise you to postpone such endeavors,” Demetrius said as he and Robin returned to the booth. “We had a nasty landslide at the beginning of Winter. Joja’s mining crew is still cleaning up their mess, so it’s difficult to determine the stability of the mountainside.”

Brandy glanced at Neel out of the corner of her eye, but he didn’t rush to defend his former employer, or show any other reaction. “I’ll wait to invest in ropes and crampons, then.”

Before she could ask whether there were other options more interesting than staring at sand and trees, Neel pushed his half-full mug away from him. “I think I’m going to head back to the farm—the coffee here’s great, but sleep is winning out over caffeine.

Brandy glanced at the pendulum clock on the wall; it was after nine. “Oh, wow, it’s a lot later than I realized. Neel is right—we should turn in soon.”

“Me, too.” Robin stretched as she stood. “I’ll be down bright and early tomorrow—I ought to be able to finish both your cabins by nightfall.”

“Oh, that will be wonderful,” Brandy said. “I mean, sure, we were all ‘roommates’ before we moved here, but we didn’t actually live in the same _room_ , you know?”

“We really appreciate how fast you’ve gotten everything built,” Neel added.

“Oh, it’s not that impressive,” Robin said, her cheeks reddening. “After all, I had nearly two weeks to do the real construction in my workshop. This is just basic assembly.”

“Well, we’re still thankful,” Brandy said. “And thanks for dinner, too!” She picked up the foil-wrapped stack of pizza slices—probably her breakfast, since Neel wouldn’t eat it cold and she doubted the hot plate would be a good way to reheat it.

“It was our pleasure,” Demetrius said. “And do let Trisha know that we’d be happy to treat her to more than leftovers when she’s feeling up to it.”

Trisha wasn’t going to take them up on that anytime soon, but Brandy just nodded as they all made their way to the door. She turned back in the doorway in time to catch another bright smile from the babe behind the bar, and grinned to herself as she stepped into the night. Pelican Town might be a bit on the tame side, but it had its attractions.


	24. 04 Spring Y1 - Sebastian

> **you’re coming this week right?**
> 
> **I still have a snowball and I’m not afraid to use it!**
> 
> _don't even think about it sam_
> 
> **if you’re not there by 530...**
> 
> _i said i'd be there_
> 
> **good**
> 
> **I’ve been practicing**
> 
> **gonna kick your ass this time**
> 
> _in your dreams_
> 
> _see you tomorrow_

Sebastian set his phone down and stretched. His current project was close enough to complete that even if he ran into problems, he knew he could get it done by mid-afternoon—maybe tonight, if all went well. He reached for his coffee and found it empty. A glance at the clock showed it was late enough that dinner would be over and cleaned up, so he grabbed his mug and went upstairs.

The running dishwasher covered up the sound of voices until it was almost too late, and he froze in the hallway as his mother groaned in irritation.

“I wish those incompetents from Joja hadn’t collapsed the pass to the spa. I could use a nice, long soak.”

“They’ve promised to clear it eventually, but it’s not unreasonable for them to focus on the other blockages first,” his stepfather said. “You’ve been pushing yourself awfully hard, these last few days.”

“I wanted to get those new cabins assembled as quickly as possible. That old cottage is much too small for three adults to be crowded into. It would be too small for two, even if they were on _very_ good terms.” Her voice sounded muffled, and Sebastian risked a glance around the doorframe. His mother had her head pillowed on her arms at the kitchen table, and Demetrius was rubbing her shoulders.

“Neel and Brandy certainly appeared to be, last night,” Demetrius suggested.

“Hmm, maybe. On the farm, they act more like siblings than anything else—all three of them.” She laughed. “None of them are really very well suited to farm work, though Brandy at least knows her way around basic hand tools, and Neel’s getting the hang of using an axe.”

“What about Trisha? I still haven’t met her.”

Sebastian heard his mother sigh. “I’m a bit worried about her, to be honest. She’s a sweet girl, but she’s awfully… delicate. I just don’t know if she’s cut out for this sort of life. I’d hate to see the farm abandoned again, especially after putting so much effort into construction and repairs.”

“At least Lewis has paid you for the work,” Demetrius said. “The cabins are finished, right?” She grunted a wordless agreement. “If they do give up on the farm, that would make it easier to find a buyer who’d keep it up. In the meantime, why don’t we drive up to Grampleton tomorrow and catch the train back to the spa?”

“Oh, that sounds lovely, even if it’s absurd to have to go so far to get to somewhere that’s practically in our back yard.”

“I’d like to have a stern word with whoever was in charge of designing Joja’s excavation charges, myself,” Demetrius grumbled. “Gil and Marlon have been stranded in their little clubhouse since the beginning of Winter, and Joja delivering supplies to them hardly makes up for that.”

“It looked like the crew was nearly done clearing that part of the landslide when I got home,” she said.

“That’s something, at least. Anyway, I was thinking… after we hit the spa, maybe we could make a date night of it in Grampleton, rather than our usual trip to the Stardrop? It’s been a while since we’ve had a night to ourselves.”

“Hmm, maybe put that on the calendar for next week, when I’m less likely to fall asleep on you? Why don’t we go discuss the details in our room?”

Sebastian grimaced and retreated down the hallway before they emerged from the kitchen. When the coast was clear, he got his coffee and reheated the bowl of soup his mother had left in the fridge. At least this time it hadn’t been _his_ life they were picking apart.


	25. 05 Spring Y1 - Neel

Neel fumbled with his phone to silence the blaring alarm, then sat up and dragged a hand through his hair as he looked around his new home. The only furniture he had until the moving truck arrived tomorrow was his bed and suitcases, but it was nice to finally have a space of his own.

He stood in the tiny shower for a long time, letting the hot water beat some of the soreness from his muscles, since now he didn't have to worry about running anyone else out of propane. Brandy was probably right that he was overdoing things, but working to the point of exhaustion meant he _slept_ at night, instead of staring up at the ceiling and sifting through his memory, trying to figure out if there was anything he had missed…

He shook his head and shut off the water before he could head back down that rabbit hole. He had turned all the information he had access to over to someone who was—he hoped—in a better position than he had been to fill in the gaps in the evidence; Joja Corporation was no longer his responsibility. He pulled on fresh clothing and headed to Trisha’s cottage for breakfast.

He found the girls already outside, comparing the greenery in their little farm plot to something on Brandy’s phone. “Do you think they’re ready? They _look_ like the pictures.”

“Pull one out and see,” Brandy said with a shrug. She handed Neel an egg-and-sausage sandwich and pointed to a paper cup of—ugh—instant coffee on the porch. “If it’s not ripe, we’ll leave the rest of them alone.”

The steps were covered with dirty footprints, so he perched on the rail, his back against one of the support columns. A small stack of mail addressed to "current occupant" was on the side rail, waiting to be opened, and he leafed through it as he ate.

“Mayor Lewis was kind enough to give us the seeds, though, and I don’t want to waste them,” Trisha said

“They’ll be just as wasted if they rot in the ground while we argue about when to pick them,” Neel said. Then he reached the bottom of the pile, and he felt his face stiffen at the sight of a familiar logo.

“Why the frown?” Brandy asked him, and he tried to smooth out his expression.

“Remember that landslide Demetrius mentioned the other night? Joja Corp’s letting everyone know they’ve cleared the blockage, and then there’s a bunch of legalese emphasizing that the operation had a permit. Sounds like it must have been contentious even before the accident.”

“I get the impression the local businesses resent JojaMart opening here,” Brandy said. “It could just be carryover from that.”

“I guess,” Neel said, but he tucked the letter into his shirt pocket instead of returning it to the pile. “Hey, Trisha, are you ever going to pull up that parsnip? You planted everything, so it seems fair that you get to reap the first harvest, too, but if you’d rather one of us do it…”

Trisha grinned sheepishly at him. “No, I’ve got this.” She carefully dug up the first of the roots.

“Well, it looks like the pictures,” Brandy said, holding up her phone next to the yellow-white vegetable. “Let’s take care of the rest.”

By the time Neel finished choking down Brandy’s horrible excuse for coffee, the parsnips were all dug up and Trisha was sprawled on the porch steps, trying to catch her breath. Neel fought down another surge of anger at how shaky she still was. She _was_ improving—spending most of the last several days in the sun had worked wonders—but it would take a lot longer to undo the damage Joja had done. Brandy was giving him a fishy look again, and he tried for idle curiosity. “So, what do we do with them, now that we’ve picked them all?”

“‘We’? I didn’t see you digging in the dirt, farm boy,” Brandy retorted.

He shrugged. “I did frighten off those crows the other morning. I told you that slingshot was worth repairing.” The birds hadn’t been back, that he’d seen, though that might have more to do with the scarecrow he had cobbled together out of the tall grass they’d cut and left to dry and an old shirt of Brandy’s that even she had agreed was past mending.

“Yes, yes, we all bow before your superior marksmanship,” Trisha said. “Caroline said her husband would love to carry more local produce, so that would be the place to start, unless the two of you want to try cooking them, instead?”

“Hmm, save a few for us and take the rest to the store?” Brandy picked up a parsnip that had split in two and twisted oddly as it grew. “Now that the cabins are finished and we’ve scheduled the moving truck drop-off, I’ll have my microwave, and I found a couple of recipes at the library that looked interesting. I could pick out the strange-looking ones that might be harder to sell.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Neel said. “Any idea how much the rest’ll go for?”

Trisha shook her head. “Not a lot of data—I can find chain grocery retail and bulk wholesale online, but for small operations selling to local stores? Nothing. It depends on what Pierre thinks he can get for them and what sort of profit margin _he_ expects to make.” She brushed her hands on her shorts and stood up. “Let me grab my tablet.”

As she went inside, Neel leaned his head back against the porch column and half-listened to Brandy mulling over what constituted a “weird” parsnip. The more the thought about the form letter from JojaCorp, the more it bothered him. “Customer Satisfaction Representative” was a Retail Division title, not a Resource Extraction one. He didn’t remember any incident reports coming in from this district, either, and while he supposed it could have been filed by one of his coworkers, accidents like that were rare enough that there would have been chatter in the office. A local cover-up? That might explain—

“Hey, Neel, I need your opinion—is this parsnip deformed or is it _perfect?”_ He turned his head to find Brandy, her expression one of studied innocence, holding up what looked like a dirt-encrusted dildo. “I am _so_ not qualified to make this assessment.”

He dredged up a crooked smile. “Nice shape, but it’s a little on the small side.”

She grinned at him. “So, what, you’d recommend I shove it back in and see if it gets bigger?”

“Well, I wouldn’t recommend taking it to Pierre’s—unless you wanted to watch Abigail put it where it belongs—”

Her cheeks turned almost the same shade as her hair. “I can think of a few better places to put this!” She shifted her grip and he saw that the parsnip even had a rounded bulge on one side, just below the leaves.

Trisha picked that moment to emerge from her cottage, tablet in hand, and her eyebrows rose. “Are you two ever going to grow up?” But she was laughing as she said it, and for a moment it felt like when they had first moved in together after high school, and the smile on his face was no longer a mask.

“Sweetie, this is kind of the definition of ‘adult’ humor,” Brandy said, lobbing the vegetable up the steps at her. The parsnip-penis’s sudden flight took Trisha by surprise, and watching her fumbling to catch it, Neel found himself laughing for real, and hard enough that he lost his balance.

“Are you all right?” Trisha, still holding the offending parsnip, peered over the rail.

“Just bruised my dignity,” he gasped when he could breathe again. He pulled himself to his feet and came over to survey their crop, trying to dust off the back of his jeans. “Jokes, aside, what now? Haul the crops down to the village, sell them, and pick up supplies with the loot?”

“That’s the plan,” Trisha said, pulling up her spreadsheet. “I’ve put in the data from the seed catalog Pierre gave Brandy, as well as the other staples she priced out—let’s figure out a shopping list, in priority order, and we’ll buy as much of it as we can with what we get from him.” They’d already drawn up a basic financial contract to begin with, subject to modification by mutual agreement: income from the farm would go first for necessities, then reinvestment into farm, with any profits beyond that split evenly among them. They each had some savings, enough for personal spending for a while, and the lack of rent would help stretch that further, but how comfortable the arrangement would be in the long run depended on how quickly they could get real crops going.

Once they’d debated through the list, Trisha saved the spreadsheet and tucked her tablet into her oversized purse. “All right, that’s settled. Should we head there now?”

“Do you think the two of you can handle it?” Brandy asked. “I’ll come with you if you need me, but I’m curious about the landslide Neel mentioned—I saw the crew clearing it when I went hiking yesterday, and it looked like there was someone living just beyond it, as well as some caves above the lake. I thought I’d stop by, introduce myself, and maybe poke around a bit.”

“Really? After hearing you wax poetic about the shopkeeper’s beautiful daughter I’d have thought you’d jump at the chance to help out.”

Brandy smirked at her. “Abigail’s cute, but so’s Maru, and _she_ was definitely flirting back, not just being friendly. For that matter, all the single ladies of Stardew Valley are pretty hot, even if Haley’s a total snob about it and Penny’s a little mousy for my taste.” She poked Neel in the side and he scowled at her, brushing at the faint trace of dirt she’d left on his shirt. “What’s the bachelor report like?”

He rolled his eyes. “Prospects aren’t so good for me. Shane’s rude as fuck and town gossip says he’s an alcoholic, Harvey’s smart but too old for me, Alex is a jock still obsessing over his glory days in high school, and Sam is cute but too cheerful to be real, plus I’m pretty sure he doesn’t swing my way.”

“Really? He didn’t even try to hit on me when I met him.”

“Maybe he’s perceptive, Brandy; you’re not exactly subtle about who you’re checking out.”

“The only woman around at the time was Evelyn, and I was definitely not flirting with ‘Granny.’”

Neel waved a hand dismissively. “Could be ace, then, or already seeing someone, or just not into either of us, specifically. In any case, my luck is looking pretty dour.”

“That’s not everyone, though.”

“Well, sure, Elliott’s easy on the eyes, but he’s even more of a peacock than I am.” Trisha ducked her head, but not before Neel saw the blush spreading across her cheeks. “Ooh, someone disagrees?”

“He accidentally snuck up on me while I was on the beach on Monday and I swear to Yoba I thought I’d stumbled onto a movie set or something. I’m pretty sure I didn’t actually drool, but I made a complete fool of myself. At least he was polite about it.”

Brandy’s lips thinned, and Neel kept his own face carefully pleasant; “polite” was a damn sight better than some of the jerks Trisha had crushed on in the past. “I haven’t really talked to him, just said hi in passing a couple of times while I was getting fishing lessons from Willy, so maybe I’m misjudging him. But anyone who looks _that_ perfect while living in a shack on the beach… No clue where his interests lie, but I’m not your competition, at any rate. Just not my type.” It wasn’t too much of a lie.

“Thanks, for whatever it’s worth. There’s at least one more guy about our age, though—didn’t Robin mention having a son?”

“Sebastian, yeah. He wasn’t at the saloon on Wednesday, but I think saw him yesterday, smoking by the lake,” Brandy said. “He had a serious ‘keep away’ vibe going, plus I like my lungs, so I didn’t go over to say hello.”

“I met him on Monday, if you can call it that,” Neel said. “He growled at me for standing between him and the coffee pot at Robin’s place. He looked like he’d just crawled out of bed, so I can sympathize. From what she said, he’s the type who gets along better with computers than people.”

“So, I’m spoiled for choice, Trisha has her eye on the movie star playing a beach bum, and Neel’s best bet is probably this parsnip. Dude, tough luck,” Brandy said, plucking it from the pile and holding it out to him.

“I’ll survive,” he said dryly, ignoring the vegetable.

“Suit yourself.” Brandy tossed it back with the other keepers and wiped her hands on her cargo pants. “So, am I good to go, or do you need help hauling? I could head up the mountain from town, instead; it’d just take longer.”

Neel hefted the basket for a moment before setting it down. “I think I can manage; it doesn’t weigh much more than the file boxes I used to handle.”

“I should help,” Trisha said.

“Sure—we can each take one handle, and if you get tired I can carry the whole thing from there.” She grimaced, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t sweat it, Trish. You’re already in better shape than when we got here.”

“I still feel like I could be doing more.”

Brandy slung her arm around Trish from the other side for a quick hug. “Neither of us thinks you’re shirking, sweetie, so don’t push yourself into a collapse trying to impress us. You two go off to the market; I’m going to go check out the mountain.”

“I’ll grab the fishing pole, too,” Neel said. “Since I’ve concluded there aren’t any fish in our pond, just junk, I thought I’d ask Willy where the good spots are.”

“Sounds good. I might check out the library.”

“You’re welcome to come with me and see if Mr. Movie Star is filming today.”

“Neel…”

He held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry, I’ll tone down the snark. Willy seems to think Elliott’s a decent sort, at least.”

“I think I’ll stick with the library, but thanks anyway.”

He ducked into from his cabin and collected the rod—and a fresh shirt, since the one he had been wearing was now filthy from his tumble into the dirt. Trisha noticed, based on the twinkle in her eye, but she didn’t comment on his change of clothes as they carried the parsnips into town.


	26. 05 Spring Y1 - Trisha

Pierre pronounced their parsnips good enough to buy, though to Trisha’s disappointment none of the root vegetables rated a silver-quality star, let alone gold. Most of their earnings went toward more seeds; additional purchases would have to wait until the next harvest.

When they left the general store, she spotted a figure on the hill behind the shop row. “Oh, there’s Mayor Lewis! I haven’t seen him since the day we got here.”

“I’ve bumped into him a few times,” Neel said. “Nice guy, always asks how we’re doing and if there’s anything he can do to help ‘make our transition to the agricultural life’ easier.” He captured the mayor’s inflection perfectly, and she grinned at him.

“I’m going to go say hello. Do you want to come with?”

“Nah, I’m heading to the pier. Text me if you need anything, okay? There’s not much signal down there, but I’ll try to check messages once in a while.”

“Sure.”

Lewis didn’t notice her approach at first; he was staring morosely at the dilapidated building at the top of the hill, which looked badly out of place in pretty Pelican Town. The mayor turned around at the sound of her sandals crunching in the gravel. “Oh, hi there.” He turned back to the weathered door as she stepped up beside him. “What an eyesore…” he murmured. He glanced sidelong at her. “This is the Pelican Town Community Center… or what’s left of it, anyway. It used to be the pride and joy of the town… always bustling with activity. Now… just look at it. It’s shameful.”

It had certainly seen better days. The paint was peeling, most of the window glass was cracked or outright missing, and the large clock over the door didn’t look as if the hands had moved in years. And yet… something about the place still held a kind of vibrancy. Perhaps it was the lush vines twining up the walls and through shattered windowpanes, or the fact that an abandoned building in Zuzu would have been covered with graffiti but the only writing on the community center was the faded “Pelican Town” stenciled on the siding. The two large windows, one on either side of the door, were like eyes watching her, and she felt a chill run up her spine despite the warm sunlight.

A familiar name snapped her attention back to the man beside her, who had continued talking without her noticing. “I’m sorry, I was lost in thought—what did you say?”

He gave her a considering look, and said. “Joja Corporation has been hounding me to sell them the land so they can turn it into a warehouse… Pelican Town could use the money, but there’s something stopping me from selling it. I guess old timers like me get attached to the relics of the past. Ah, well. If anyone else buys a Joja Co. Membership I’m just gonna go ahead and sell it.”

“What? That doesn’t make any sense!” Lewis looked taken aback by her exclamation, and she realized she must have sounded like she was questioning his decision, rather than the corporation’s. “That little JojaMart across the river is much too small to need a warehouse of its own, and we’re too far off the main roads to make a good central location for the district. The dirt and cobblestone roads between here and the highway wouldn’t support that many delivery trucks, anyway, and even if the town was willing to pave, the increased traffic would be a hazard in the middle of a park area like this. It would be an insurance nightmare!” There was a _playground_ right next door, for Yoba's sake!

Lewis’s eyebrows rose. “That’s right, you used to work for Joja, didn’t you? Here, let’s go inside…” He took a small wooden box out of his pocket, and drew out an old-fashioned key. “Maybe there’s something about the building that would explain their interest?” Trisha started to decline, but something in the way his shoulders slumped as he fumbled with the lock caused her to hold her tongue; she thought the idea of selling pained him even more than he let on. She eyed the ivy-covered walls; it didn’t _look_ like it was in imminent danger of collapsing, so if he thought it was safe…

She shivered as she followed him out of the sun, her skin prickling with more than the loss of the light. More plants grew through the floorboards, hungrily seeking the slivered sunbeams that crept through the windows and the gaps in the roof, and she felt a pang of sympathy for them, trapped somewhere they didn’t really belong but doing the best they could to survive. She rubbed her hands over her bare arms, trying to smooth down the goosebumps.

Lewis stopped in the middle of the room, eyeing a strange construction in one corner. “Hmm? What’s this?” It looked like a little cave or hut, the sides crudely woven out of bits of bark and twigs and the “roof” a pile of leaves. “I guess Vincent and Jas must’ve been playing in here.” Those must be the kids Neel and Brandy had mentioned seeing around town; the entrance of the hut was too small for an adult to pass through, but smaller children might be able to fit. He shook his head as he turned to face her. “This place is even more dilapidated than I remember.”

A flash of green behind him caught Trisha’s eye. It looked like nothing so much as a small, half-inflated ball with a twig sticking out of its center; however, it wasn’t bouncing like something thrown or dropped but as if it was directing its own movement. She gasped and took a step back as eyes opened in its surface, blinking slowly before fixing on her.

Lewis gave her a quizzical look. “What?” He turned in the direction she was staring, but the green thing had disappeared in a sparkle of sunlit dust motes. “What’s the matter? Are you ill?”

She stepped around him and looked past him. There was no hole in the wall where the thing had been, and the nearest window was the only one she had seen so far with its glass intact. “I thought… there was something there.”

“You saw something? Hmm. I wouldn’t be surprised if this place was full of rats.”

It hadn’t been a rodent she had seen—and the creature that appeared between them at the door, once again behind Lewis’s back, was definitely not a rat. This time she could make out two twig-like arms—or were they arm-like twigs? she wondered, alarm making her giddy—in addition to the stem growing out of its top.

Lewis spun to follow her shocked gaze, but again it vanished into thin air even as he started moving. “You’re worrying me, Trisha,” Lewis said quietly.

She swallowed. Dr. Chang had never mentioned she might start seeing things, and nothing she had ever read about dryad syndrome suggested hallucinations were a symptom… but it was so rare, and what if those before her had kept this particular wrinkle to themselves, for fear of further judgment? “I’m sure it’s just rats, like you said.”

Lewis didn’t look convinced, but he shrugged. “Look, I think I’m going to head home. I need some lunch.” He headed for the door, and then paused. “Hey. Why don’t I leave the key with you? Maybe you can help catch that rat if you have some extra time.” He pressed the key into her palm before she could object. It felt warm in her hand, as if warding off the creeping chill she felt in the building, and so when they emerged once more into the sunlight, she locked the door and slipped the key onto her keychain, beside the one to the cottage.


	27. 05 Spring Y1 - Brandy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note: There's some mild, canon-typical violence/injury in this chapter, as Brandy discovers the mine and the mine's inhabitants discover Brandy.

All that remained of the landslide was some lingering dirt and debris on the footbridge, and Brandy nudged a few stones into the water with satisfying splashes. The “cave” she had seen from the far bank was braced with timbers, which she hadn’t noticed from a distance. She poked her head inside long enough to see that it looked like the entrance to a mine before heading for the log-and-plank building beyond it. Caverns were one thing; a defunct mine had hazards of its own that she didn’t care to risk without more information, which the people that lived closest to it might be able to give her.

No one answered her knock at the door, and a discreet brass sign off to the side proclaimed this to the be the headquarters of an outfit calling themselves the Adventurer’s Guild, Members Only. She shrugged and kept hiking. A narrow ravine cut through the mountains on the east side of the lake; a bridge had once spanned the gap, but judging from the decaying wooden supports on the near side it had collapsed long ago. She could see another mine entrance on the far side of the boulder-strewn ground beyond the bridge and a more natural-looking cave closer to her.

Testing her footing carefully, Brandy edged up to the lip of the ravine and went down on one knee to peer over. Getting down from here would be simple enough, but she didn’t see much in the way of handholds on the far side. If she wanted to check it out she would need to invest in some serious climbing gear—probably not a good way to spend her meager savings, not without a better motive than curiosity.

She stood and headed back for the footbridge. It hadn’t been a wasted trip; she now knew to come back later to see what sort of “adventurers” hung out here. As she passed the mine entrance, though, a flicker of movement caught her eye, and she moved in for a closer look.

 _Maybe Trisha wasn’t so far off the mark with that comment about movie sets,_ she thought. A pale-haired man stood in the middle of the cavern, staring down at a hole with a ladder sticking out of it. He wore a half-cape slung over a green tunic, like something out of a fantasy flick, though a black eyepatch made him look more “pirate” than “prince.” His trousers and hiking boots were as thoroughly modern—and well-worn—as her own, however, and she didn’t see any sign of a film crew.

Since the cavern’s roof looked stable, she decided it was probably safe enough to go inside. The man glanced over at her approach. Up close, the faded scars on his face suggested the eyepatch might not be a costume piece. He had a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee, though the rest of his hair—gray, rather than the blonde she had first assumed—looked like something had been using it for a nest. “I was just peering down into this old mine shaft,” he said. “It’s been abandoned for decades. Still, there’s probably good ore down there.”

Brandy made a noncommittal sound; if there was, why would it have been abandoned?

His mustache twitched; it was hard to tell beneath the facial hair, but she thought he might have smiled. “But a dark place, undisturbed for so long… I’m afraid ore isn’t the only thing you’ll find.” Then, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, he swept aside the fabric draped from his shoulder to reveal a sheathed sword. She tensed, but he held it out toward her by the top of the scabbard, which was wrapped with leather straps. “Here, take this. You might need it.”

Her eyebrows rose, and for a long moment they just stared at each other. “Okaaaaay,” she said at last, and took it from him. It was heavier than she had expected—definitely not plastic. _There are cameras hidden here somewhere, aren’t there? This is some sort of prank show._

He came around the side of the hole and started toward the entrance. “Name’s Marlon, by the way. I run the Adventurer’s Guild right outside. I’ll keep my eye on you. Prove yourself and I might think about making you a member.” He was gone before Brandy could come up with a response.

Was the “guild” some sort of role-playing group? She looked at the sword in her hands and slid it a few inches out of the sheath. The blade was pitted with rust, but it still looked sharp enough to be dangerous. She drew it free of the scabbard and angled it in the lamplight so she could get a better look. Someone had definitely made an effort to sharpen it, judging by the way the edge shone compared to the rest of the metal.

 _Wait… lamps?_ She had been too focused on Marlon the Adventurer to pay much attention to her surroundings, but now she saw that electric lights were spaced around the cavern. They had been off, invisible, when she had first glanced inside. The old-fashioned incandescent bulbs wouldn’t have lasted the decades the man had spoken of. Why would anyone pay to light an abandoned mine? She put the sword back into its sheath and knelt beside the ladder; she could see more light, fainter, at the bottom of the shaft.

She stood and drew the blade Marlon had given her again, giving it a few experimental swings. Everything she knew about swords came from movies and video games, her self-defense classes having focused on empty-handed techniques and weapons of opportunity, but she thought she understood better now what “well balanced” meant. She unwrapped the straps from the sheath, which turned out to be the sort of sword belt that would have gone with Marlon’s tunic.

It looked considerably more out of place run through the belt loops of her cargo pants.

She stood beside the ladder, tapping her foot as she tried to work out what exactly was going on. _Only one way to find out, I suppose._ But there was no sense in being careless about it. She pulled her phone out of its pocket; the signal was surprisingly strong, compared to the reception she got at the farm. She hesitated over the contacts list for a moment before tapping her choice.

“Brandy?” She could hear a faint splashing behind Neel’s voice.

“Are you down at the beach? I thought the reception sucked down there.”

“No, Willy suggested I try fishing in the river in town,” he said. “What’s going on? You usually just text.”

“I’m either about to fall for a really elaborate prank or go on an adventure,” she said, grinning, and explained what was going on.

There was a long silence when she finished. “Some old guy in a costume gives you an actual, not-a-prop sword and tells you the mines are dangerous, so you’re going to go down there?” He sounded more like he was making sure he had heard her correctly than the horrified disbelief she would have gotten from Trisha.

“Like I said, maybe he’s just having me on, playing a trick on the newcomer. I’m curious, but I’m also not stupid, so I want someone on the line with me.”

“Not an expert, but cell phones don’t work all that well underground, do they?”

“I’ve got a good signal here, and the floor’s not that far down, so I should be fine. If the signal drops I’ll come right back up.”

Another silence. “Right. Well, I know better than to try to talk you out of something like this, so I’ll play witness.”

“Thanks, hon. I’m putting the phone on speaker and sticking it in my shirt pocket now.” She buttoned down the pocket and checked the way the sword hung at her hip, and then eased herself onto the ladder, testing each rung before she let her weight shift onto it. “Okay, there’s a smaller chamber down here. One lamp, not as well kept as the others. Some big stones scattered around, but not much else.” She walked slowly around the space, but aside from a few marks in the dirt that might be from mice or large insects, there was no sign of life. “Couple more lamps in the walls, not lit. Both are missing their bulbs, and one looks like it’s been scavenged for other parts. Huh, what’s this?” She knelt beside one of the larger boulders.

“Brandy?” Neel prompted after a while.

“Sorry. Looks like there might be something under one of these rocks.” She tried to roll it aside, but it was too heavy. “Hmm… I probably shouldn’t use the sword as a crowbar. It’s rusty enough that it might snap.” A few minutes of searching turned up nothing useful. “I’m heading back up for a minute to see if I can find a branch or something.”

She didn’t even have to leave the mine entrance; the mine cart off to one side was rusted in place, but there were a few pieces of bent rail leaning against the wall, no doubt replaced during some long-ago repairs, that looked promising. She lowered one through the shaft and climbed back down.

“Ah-hah! I was right. It’s another shaft.”

“Brandy…”

She pulled the phone out. “The signal’s still strong; I haven’t even lost a bar yet.” She buttoned the phone back into her pocket. The light at the bottom of this hole was fainter, but still present. She tossed the rail down and waited, but nothing happened. “Okay, I’m going down.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Maybe not, but now I’m _really_ curious.” She climbed down this ladder as carefully as the first. “New chamber’s a bit bigger than the last. It looks like there’s more than one room—the cave narrows to a sort of tunnel, but I think it widens again after that.” The light was coming from beyond the narrow part, and she took a few steps in that direction. “Some different types of rock down here. Huh, this one looks like it might have some copper ore running through it. Maybe that Marlon guy was right.” A shiny, greenish rock near the narrow spot caught her eye. “I wonder what that—holy shit!”

“Brandy?”

Brandy was too busy scrambling backward to answer right away, because the “rock” had started moving when she approached. Its surface rippled and wobbled like gelatin, and glistening black eyes swiveled to stare at her. It lurched forward, leaving a glistening trail behind it on the cavern floor.

“Okay, that is a very cool special effect, but what the fuck is that thing supposed to be?” It was mostly clear, so whatever mechanisms moved it ought to be visible, but all she could see was the rocky floor on the other side. She snatched up the piece of rail and jabbed at the… creature? It flinched away when the rail struck it. “Hah, take that!” The dent the metal had made in the jiggling surface disappeared in seconds.

“Talk to me, Brandy. What’s going on?”

“The fuck if I know! It looks like a bag of snot with eyes. And teeth? C’mon, people, how the fuck does snot have teeth?” Obviously this had something to do with what that Marlon guy had said about “proving herself,” but this was starting to feel less like a prank or game by the second. She backed away again, then swore; she hadn’t been paying attention to where everything around her was, and now she would have to get past the thing to reach the ladder.

“Get out of there!” Neel snapped.

“I’m trying! It’s between me and the exit.” Another of the creatures wobbled into view beyond the point where the cave narrowed. The scabbard hanging from her waist clattered against the wall, reminding her that she had a better weapon than her makeshift crowbar. She yanked the sword out and slashed it toward the blob. “Well, that got its attention,” she said, wincing at the whistling shriek the thing let out. Slime oozed from the shallow cut she had made. She stabbed at it, putting as much force as she could behind the blow, and the sword’s tip sank in deeply. Then—

“Brandy? Brandy!”

“I’m fine, Neel. Possibly about to puke, but fine.” The snot-creature had burst like the water balloon it resembled. Most of the slime had hit the walls and floor, but she scraped a wad of it off of her forearm, then frowned. “Shit.” The skin it had touched was reddening. “Okay, I’m out of here,” she said, as her arm began to tingle. She climbed the first ladder with more haste than was wise, but fortunately none of the rungs broke. She took a moment to shove the boulder back over the opening and took the second ladder more carefully. The stinging on her arm, and now her fingertips as well, was annoying, but it didn’t seem to be doing any major damage. Or was that just the adrenaline surging through her veins, drowning out more serious signals? “Neel, chill. I’m out of the mine. Whew! Well I did say I wanted something exciting to do.”

“Are you all right?”

“The snot-monster exploded when I stabbed it, and I think the goo has some sort of acid in it.” She dug her water bottle out of yet another pocket and splashed her skin; the relief was immediate, but not complete. “I’m going to go wash it off in the lake.”

In the bright daylight, her arm just looked like she had a weird, blotchy sunburn, but she should get it looked at, anyway… once she figured out what to tell the town doc had happened. She glared at the building by the mines. “A little more warning would have been nice,” she muttered, wiping her hands on the grass to dry them. She took out her phone and switched it off speaker. “I need to have a chat with that Marlon asshole, so I’m going to let you go now.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? What if—”

“Neel, honey, depending on how this ‘conversation’ goes, there might be assault charges involved. Do you really want to be called as a witness?”

“Um.”

“Relax, I’m not going to do any real damage. I’m as pissed at myself for letting him bait me as I am at him, and I _really_ want to find out what that was all about.”

She heard him exhale. “Fine. But you’re going to be explaining this to Trisha tonight. I was planning to grab dinner in town anyway, and now I also want to stay out of shouting range.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “Catch you later.”

As it happened, Neel wouldn’t need to worry about witness statements any time soon; there was no response to her pounding on the door, and the curtains were all drawn, keeping her from seeing if there was even anyone inside.


	28. 05 Spring Y1 - Neel

Neel stared at the dark screen for a long moment, ignoring the tug of something on the fishing rod. Finally, he stuffed his phone back in his pocket and reeled in the line. _More junk. Luck is not with me today._ He flung the wad of algae back in the river and stood up, heading for the main square.

From there, he spotted Trisha up on the hill where she had been talking to the mayor a while ago. As he watched, she opened the door of the rundown old building by the playground, vanishing inside. Brandy charging boldly into danger was normal, but Trisha walking into a structure that looked like it might fall down in a strong wind? Not so much. If he followed her inside to find out what was going on, though, she’d be pissed later when she found out he’d known about their friend’s latest stunt, and there was no way he was going to be the one to tell her. Brandy could handle the fallout.

It was too early for dinner, not even four, but he leaned his fishing pole against the wall beside the Stardrop Saloon’s door and went inside. The bar area was empty except for Emily, though he could hear Gus in the kitchen. “Hey, Neel, you want some coffee, right?”

Apparently two days in a row was enough to constitute a “regular” order? He was tempted to pick something else, just to keep her guessing, but decided not to push it. The bartender acted cheerful enough, but he’d noticed that her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes when she talked to him. “Yeah, but could you add a shot of whisky to it? Kind of been a day, if you know what I mean.”

Emily’s head tilted to the side, her short blue hair sticking out in all directions as usual, but though her golden-brown eyes were penetrating, she didn’t ask for details. “Sure thing,” she said after a few seconds. “You have a preference for what kind?”

He would prefer the bottle he could see on the top shelf, but he was already planning to splurge on dinner, so he named the cheapest brand. He ducked into the bathroom long enough to wash the river muck from his hands, then pulled up a mindless game on his phone and pretended to be absorbed with it as other customers trickled in, which—as he had hoped—dissuaded anyone from interrupting him as he sipped his drink and mulled over the day’s events.

There was definitely something weird going on in Stardew Valley.

The letter had been the first solid hint. He’d handled any number of mining permits and related files for Joja, and the string of characters the letter had cited was complete bullshit, something someone who didn’t know what they were doing might invent to make the letter seem more legit—to other people who didn’t know what legit should look like. Not to mention the fact that the only time people felt it necessary to emphasize that what they were doing was “entirely legal” was when it wasn’t, or was at least walking close enough to the ledge to be having trouble keeping its balance. Combined with Brandy’s misadventure in the mines, he couldn’t help but wonder what the “drilling” operation was actually about. Unfortunately, he no longer had access to find out. He could kick himself for not keeping a copy of the files he had delivered to his contact, even though getting caught with something like that would have been very bad—not only for him, but for Trisha and Brandy, just for standing too close to him.

Then there was Brandy’s encounter. What was all this nonsense about an “adventurer’s guild” about? It had sounded like a LARP group until Brandy had started talking about acid burns. And why had Trisha been going into that old building?

None of it made sense. All he knew was that _something_ was rotten around here, and he’d left the city to get away from this sort of shit. He flicked colored gems around his phone screen, wishing he could get the peculiarities in his life to line up as neatly.

Emily stopped by to refill his mug again—he’d stuck to unadulterated coffee after the first had taken the edge off his tension—but this time she didn’t pour right away. “Do you want anything to eat? I’m worried all that coffee’s going to burn a hole in your stomach.”

He looked up and blinked; the saloon was more crowded than it had been the last couple of days, and the clock on the wall showed he had been there for over two hours, stewing in baffled anger. “You’re probably right.” She slid a menu over to him, and for the first time that day he felt that maybe not _every_ force in the universe was set against him. “Sashimi? Really?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t care for it myself, but Willy brought in a bunch of fish Gus said were too good to ‘waste’ on cooking, and he likes to shake up the menu every once in a while. If you’re into that sort of thing, I’m told you won’t find better between here and Zuzu City.”

“Hmm.” He considered his current finances; the prices were a little lower than what he’d expect to pay in the city, and he _had_ intended to treat himself, after all. “Okay, how about three of the sampler plates then?”

Emily’s eyes widened. “That’s a lot of raw fish.”

“I’ve been doing heavy labor for the past week, and I’m not used to it. I’ve worked up an appetite and could use the protein.” And the chef at his favorite restaurant in the city had stopped marveling at the amount of sushi he could pack away after the first two or three visits.

She looked like she might say more, but then she just smiled and shook her head. “All right then.” When she returned from the kitchen, she asked him if he wanted to stick with coffee or order something else.

“I don’t suppose you have any sake?”

“Sorry, no. Gus recommends the plum wine, if you don’t mind your alcohol a bit on the sweet side.”

“Sounds perfect—but could I get water for now, and the drink with dinner?”

While he waited for his food, he looked around the busy saloon. It appeared that some things were the same in the countryside as in the city—Friday evening was _the_ time to go out. Most of the usual fixtures from the last couple of days were there—Pam, a middle-aged woman who he hadn’t run into anywhere other than the saloon, was holding up her end of the bar, while Shane had abandoned his spot at the other end to lurk in a corner, glaring over his beer at anyone who looked like they might talk to him. Clint walked in just then, completing the trifecta, though from Neel’s observations the town blacksmith was there to make eyes at Emily rather than for the booze. He was pretty sure the man was wasting his time, given the way the blue-haired woman had been trading looks with Brandy on Wednesday—but maybe she was bi, and besides, it wasn’t any of his business. Willy was already sitting at Clint’s usual table, but the two must be friends, because they started chatting as the blacksmith sat down. Pierre, perched a few stools down from Neel, traded a friendly nod with Robin and Demetrius when they took a break from dancing to the cheerful music playing on the jukebox.

On the other side of the room were two women he hadn’t met, though he thought he could put names to them based on Brandy’s descriptions. The older one, her frizzy brown hair threaded with silver, must be Marnie, the rancher who lived to the south of them. The other had carrot-orange hair gathered into a thick braid and sat at one of the back tables with a glass of red wine and a sketchbook—probably Leah, a relative newcomer to the valley and an artist of some sort. He should introduce himself, he thought, but before he could stand up he heard the kitchen door.

He swiveled on his stool as Emily brought out his dinner. The portions were very generous, a bigger meal than he’d planned, but he still had a bit of space on his shelf in Trisha’s fridge. It would keep for a day or so—

Then Gus followed her out, carrying two more plates identical to the first.

Neel rubbed a hand over his face as Emily set her burden in front of him. “All right, next time you tell me something’s a lot of food, I’m going to ask for specifics.” It would be bad form to ask for a refund on the other two plates, wouldn’t it?

“You still want that wine?” she asked, smirking at him, though there was still that odd wariness in her eyes.

“Yeah, now I need a drink to cope with the embarrassment,” he said, trying for a sheepish grin. “Seriously, I feel bad, because this looks delicious and I don’t have a fridge at home, just a little shelf for essentials at Trisha’s place.”

Gus chuckled. “If you don’t want it going to waste, the folks in the arcade would probably be happy to take some of it off your hands. It’s getting to be about the time they usually order dinner.”

“Arcade?” Gus pointed toward a pair of swinging doors off to the side, beyond the tiny dance floor, which he had noticed on earlier visits but hadn’t paid much mind to. “Sure, someone else might as well benefit from my hubris.” He picked up the plate in front of him. If whoever was in there didn’t want his company, he’d just bring one back out to the bar to eat.

“Hah! Take that!” Sam was standing beside a pool table, holding a cue stick above his head like a trophy.

“You made one shot, Sam, don’t let it go to your head,” Abigail said from a couch on the far side of the room, not glancing away from her phone. “He’s still going to kick your ass.”

“No, he can _kiss_ my—Oh, hey, Neel! What’s up?” Sam lowered the pool cue and the purple-haired woman looked up.

“Well… I put in a dinner order thinking of city prices and serving sizes, and long story short I now have way more sashimi than one person can possibly eat. Gus suggested you folks might be interested in sharing? My treat.”

“The daily special’s sashimi and you didn’t tell me?” An unfamiliar baritone voice with a hint of gravel to it came from the corner of the room that was hidden behind the door Neel was propping open. “Why were we even debating pizza toppings?”

“Because I like pizza better, and it was my turn to buy?” Sam said with a mock glare in the direction of the voice.

“Is that a yes or a no?” Emily asked over Neel’s shoulder; she had taken the other two plates from Gus. “My arms are getting tired.”

“Wow, you weren’t kidding about over-ordering,” Abigail said, getting up from the couch. “Sure, bring it in!” She took one of the platters from the bartender and deposited it on a table in the corner, with Emily following suit.

Neel hesitated, still holding his own plate. “Do you mind extra company? I’m fine with gift-and-run if this is a private party, but—”

“No, stick around!” Sam said. “You at least have to explain how you wound up with a whole lake’s worth of fish.”

Emily smiled and headed for the door. “I’ll go grab some more utensils and your drink, Neel. Anyone else need anything? No?”

As she left, Neel set down his share. “At my favorite sushi place in the city, a ‘sampler’ is about this big—” he framed a quarter of the plate with his hands “—and costs a little more than what the saloon menu listed. I assumed it’d be the same size here, and I was hungry so I ordered three. Emily tried to warn me. Next time I’ll listen.”

“Your loss is our gain,” Abigail said, snatching up the single pair of chopsticks that had already been with the food.

“Hey!” Sam tried to grab them away from her, but she dodged him and plucked a piece of salmon off of the plate, popping it into her mouth. “Rude, Abby. It’s Neel’s dinner.”

She shrugged and swallowed. “You snooze, you lose.” But she did glance uncertainly at Neel.

It was such a Brandy-like move that he couldn’t be irritated with her, even as hungry as he was. “Don’t worry about it. There’s plenty to go around, and I’m not going to starve to death in the next couple of minutes.”

“Hey, Sam, it’s still your turn.”

Neel had almost forgotten that there was a fourth person present. The man was leaning against the corner, little more than a shadow due to the bright lamps over the pool table between him and the rest of the group, and the fact that he was dressed in dark clothes. Now he pushed himself away from the wall and approached them.

Sam looked down at the cue stick still clutched one hand. “Whoops!” He turned toward the pool table and started lining up a shot. “Sorry, Sebastian. Didn’t mean to hold up the game.”

Sebastian? Neel’s brain hiccupped as he tried to resolve his first impression of Robin’s son with the present reality. Tall; that hadn’t changed, obviously. Black hair, but now he could see that it was cut very short on the left, with the rest swept to the right, falling like a raven’s feathers almost to the collar of the black hoodie that had taken the place of the faded bathrobe. He was clean-shaven now, and instead of sweatpants—

Neel spared a moment to be grateful his complexion was dark enough that the heat rising in his face wouldn’t show. He had no idea how any guy could stand to wear jeans that tight, but he couldn’t deny it made for a great view.

The flush cooled quickly, because one thing had not improved over his first encounter with Sebastian: sleepy confusion was now replaced with a hostile glare. The others might have invited Neel to stay, but their friend was less welcoming. “Hi,” he began, hoping to change that, but before he could say more, Emily bustled back in.

“Here you go! ‘Scuse me, Sebastian,” she laid a hand on his arm as she squeezed past to reach the table and deposit a stack of smaller plates and more chopsticks, then hand Neel a glass of amber wine. “Enjoy, and just holler if any of you want another round.”

As she left, Sam muttered a curse. “I scratched. You’re up.” He handed Sebastian the cue ball.

The taller man set the ball aside long enough to fill one of the small plates before retreating to the far corner of the room and resuming the game, ignoring Neel’s greeting entirely.

Abigail rolled her eyes and started loading a plate of her own. “Don’t mind Seb,” she murmured. “He’s not exactly Mr. Social, but we drag him out of his cave a couple times a week to make sure he doesn’t go completely feral.” She nodded toward the couch on the other side of the room and raised her voice. “While we’re waiting to see how badly Sam loses this time—”

“Hey!”

“—you can tell me about life in Zuzu City, and how in Yoba’s name you lot wound up in Stardew Valley.”

Neel put on a smile and filled a plate for himself as he sifted through what was safe to share. “Well, a few weeks ago Trisha comes home from work and announces out of the blue that she’s moving to this farm she inherited…” The fish was just as good as Gus had promised, and he was able—for now—to shove his simmering anger and worry deep enough under the surface to appreciate the food and the company.


	29. 05 Spring Y1 - Trisha

Trisha spent a fruitless couple of hours scouring the library for information, including having to get the librarian to show her how to use the card catalog, since he was only just beginning to enter the books into the software his predecessor had purchased but never set up. The problem was that she had no idea what she was looking for; there was no subject heading for “green blobby things that vanish into sparkles,” or any other keyword she could apply to them. She had opted not to look up “hallucinations,” since that wouldn’t help her if the things were real and would be of limited use if they weren’t.

She thanked Gunther for his help and promised that she, like Brandy and Neel, would keep an eye out for anything that might help him rebuild the purloined museum collection the library had once hosted. But when she left the library, she found she couldn’t get the image of the abandoned community center—and the things she may or may not have seen—out of her thoughts. The decrepit hulk of the building loomed above the town as she started to head for the road home, and though it was probably a mistake, she veered toward it, instead. The key the mayor had given her turned smoothly in the lock; since the sun was no longer high enough to shine through the gaps in through the roof, she took out her phone and turned on the flashlight function and stepped inside. 

The beam picked out every ridge and dip in the dirt covering the floor, and Trisha frowned and approached the weird mud-and-bark hut. She didn’t think children the age of those she had seen outside would be sophisticated enough to cover up their footprints to hide that they were playing in here, but there was no sign of any tracks around the entrance, though she could see the impressions left by herself and the mayor earlier that day. That didn’t rule out their having built and abandoned it long enough ago that the dust had filled in their prints, but how long would such a haphazard construction survive? She crouched down and tried to angle the flashlight through the opening, but the shadows inside swallowed the beam without revealing anything but a continuation of the dirt-caked floorboards.

The back of her neck prickled when she turned her back on the hut and began a slow circuit of the building. An ancient bulletin board hung in a hallway, covered with yellowing newspaper clippings and fliers. Some of the photos, grainy as they were, caught her eye, and she couldn’t help a smile at an image of Lewis, hair still dark, handing an award certificate for winning a recipe contest to a middle-schooler she recognized, after a moment, as Caroline. She leafed through the papers carefully, but though she saw a couple of the other villagers she knew, and a few more names that Brandy or Neel had mentioned, there was no trace of her grandfather there.

She resumed her exploration. Past the bulletin board she found an old office featuring an empty safe with its door hanging by one hinge, and a boiler room that looked like the “what not to do” image in a fire-safety flyer. She retreated to the main room, giving the hut another uneasy glance, but there was still no sign of the creature she had seen that morning.

The pantry and kitchen would have been the place to look for rats, but there were no signs of life other than the weeds struggling through the floorboards in the hallway, and no trace of food debris had been left behind. Across the hall from the pantry—

In the doorway, Trisha froze, as did the yellow-orange blob on the far side of the room. Its large, dark eyes were the only thing that moved, blinking slowly at her, and though she couldn’t have said why, she found herself describing its expression as _pleading_. She held her breath and slid her thumb across the phone’s surface, trying to access the camera, but as soon as her screen brightened, the creature jumped and vanished, just as the green one had before.

This time, however, there was more than mud left behind, something that glinted like metal. Trisha flipped the camera app into video mode and hit record, hoping this wasn’t going to wind up on some TV network’s “found footage” mystery show. _This is a bad idea. It’s the part of the film where some third-tier actor grabs the too-obvious treasure so the hero can later find their corpse caught in whatever trap it triggers._

The “treasure” looked like the award the mayor had been giving out in the photo on the bulletin board, parchment edged in shiny gold foil, and for a moment she felt like a fool; just more debris from the time this building had been the social hub of the town. Her embarrassed relief was short lived; surely paper would be covered in dirt like everything else? She leaned over to get a better look.

It lay as flat as if it had been pasted to the floor, save for where the short edges curled up like the paper had once been rolled into a cylinder. Something had been written on it, or perhaps drawn was a better term, for the squiggles and whorls didn’t look like characters in any language she had heard of. She angled her phone over it, but the auto-focus function wouldn’t lock onto it, zooming in and out in a way that made the marks look like they were moving.

She looked directly at it again, and her stomach clenched; the writing _was_ moving. She stood abruptly and backed out of the room. What was going _on_ here? She made sure to lock the door behind her when she left.

She had emerged into sunset, and her spirits lifted momentarily as she realized that, despite spending several hours indoors today, she still didn’t feel the gnawing hunger that had been her constant companion for weeks. _I really am getting better… assuming this isn’t some new symptom to worry about._ She bit her lip. It was much too late to call Dr. Chang, but tomorrow—no, it was already Friday, so she would call Monday to ask his advice.

An alternative way to check her sanity suggested itself upon reaching the gate to the farm, because Brandy was just walking up the steps to her new cabin. She looked over as Trisha called her name and lifted a hand to wave, jerking it back down as her jacket sleeve slid back to reveal—

“Oh my goodness, Brandy, what happened?” Trisha darted forward, all thought of her own problems vanishing at the sight of the white bandage wrapped around her friend’s forearm. “You’re hurt!”

“It’s nothing,” the pink-haired woman said, tugging the sleeve back in place. “Just a minor chemical burn, Harvey said.” She was standing oddly, as well, and Trisha’s eyes narrowed; was she hurt worse than she was letting on?

“Let me take a closer lo—is that a _sword_?”

Brandy sighed. “It’s been a very weird day.” The giggle that burst from Trisha’s lips sounded unhinged to her, and apparently to her friend, as well. “Are _you_ all right, sweetie?”

Trisha choked back her laughter before it could turn into a sob of relief. Maybe there really was something strange in Pelican Town, and it wasn’t in her head. “I bet I’ve got you beat,” she said. Though at least her day hadn’t included a visit to the clinic.

“Come inside and tell me about it while I get my dinner together. Neel said he was going to eat in town, by the way.”

“Neel’s going out on a Friday night? At least something’s right with the world,” Trisha said, dropping her purse on the table they’d transferred from the old farmhouse and sinking into the chair.

“So what happened?”

“You know that crumbling old building on the hill north of town? I think it’s haunted.” She described her encounter with Lewis. When she started describing the creature she had seen, Brandy’s eyes went wide. “Shit! They’re here in town, too?”

“You saw them somewhere else?”

She held up her bandaged arm. “More than _saw_. How did you and Lewis get away?”

Trisha stared at her. “Get away? Lewis didn’t even see it, because it vanished into thin air when he started to turn toward it. Same thing when it appeared on the other side of the room—or maybe that was a different one, I’m not sure.”

Brandy tore the label off a can of soup, opened it, and set it on top of the hot plate. “I wish the ones I’d run into had done that. One of those ugly fuckers jumped straight at me. Did you see the size of the teeth on them? I finally managed to stick that sword into it, and it splattered acid slime everywhere. I got the fuck out of the mine before the one behind it could get any closer.”

“Teeth? I didn’t see any teeth.” There had been a faint impression of a mouth, though, now that she thought about it. “And the ones I saw were… kind of cute, really. I was just afraid I was hallucinating them.”

“Cute. A moving bag of acid snot a meter in diameter, and you think it’s cute?”

“What? Ew, no. They were a quarter of that size, maybe less, and they looked more like… I don’t know, little inflatable balls that hadn’t been blown up all the way. Not plastic, exactly, but definitely not slimy and gross like what you’re describing.”

“Hmm. Maybe they weren’t the same thing, then.” Brandy stuck a spoon in the soup can and stirred, then tasted it. “Could be related species?”

“Maybe. I wish I’d gotten my phone’s camera up in time to get a shot of the one I saw when I returned.”

“You went back in there?” Brandy nearly knocked the soup can over as she spun back to face Trisha. “Are you out of your mind?”

“That was kind of my concern, yeah,” she said. “Wait, back up—you said something about a mine? And where did you get a sword in the first place?”

“Up beyond the landslide Joja just cleared away, there’s a closed-down mine. I ran into this old guy up there, said he was part of an ‘adventurer’s guild’ and that if I was going to go down there, I’d need this.” She patted the sword still hanging from her hip. “I figured it was a prank of some sort, but I was curious. On the other hand, _I_ called Neel and had him on the line the whole time, so it’s not like I was flying completely solo.”

“That’s… actually not a bad idea,” Trisha said. “I wish I’d thought of that. Oh! But I did get a video of the scroll-thing I found after the yellow blob vanished.” She pulled out her phone. “I couldn’t get it to focus, so I don’t know how much use it’ll be.” They watched the video together; the metallic gold decorations around the edges of the square were crisp and clear, but the writing looked even more indistinct than when she was filming it.

“That’s… really strange,” Brandy said. “Was it that blurry in person?”

“No. I couldn’t make any sense of it, and the symbols seemed like they were moving if I stared at them for very long, but I could _see_ them.”

Brandy tasted her soup again, then picked up the can with a hot pad and dumped its contents into a bowl. “Huh.” She shooed Trisha out of the chair so she could sit down. “And I thought I’d be bored out here.”

“So what now?”

“Your critters seem harmless, at least so far. Let’s start there. We can check out the old building tomorrow.”

“Right. Cameras rolling from the start, this time.”

“Sounds like a plan.”


	30. 05 Spring Y1 - Sebastian

Sebastian had been annoyed when Sam invited the new guy to stay without so much as checking with the rest of them, but Neel seemed content to let Abigail pepper him with questions instead of crowding the pool table. By the time he racked the balls for a second game, he was able to tune out the distraction of an unfamiliar person watching him trounce Sam at pool. And Gus’s sashimi was excellent, as always, with “free” being an unexpected bonus.

His best friend tried yet another of the over-the-top trick shots he loved despite being terrible at them, then groaned and slumped against the table. He had managed to jump the cue ball over Sebastian’s solid, but in addition to hitting the stripe he had been aiming for, it nudged the 8-ball into a pocket.

“Wow, Sam, that was what, your third turn?” Abigail said from across the room as she and Neel polished off the last of the fish. “I think that might be a new record.”

“Not quite. He sank the 8-ball on the break, once.”

“Sure, rub it in, Seb. We both agreed that was a fluke and didn’t count. Are you up for another game?”

Sam was two beers in and had ordered a third, which meant he was going to keep trying impossible shots. He’d also been complaining about Morris cutting his hours at work, which meant that if he broke something, Sebastian would be the one covering the bill. He glanced at the new farmer, who had smirked at the mention of Sam’s absurdly unlucky break—he must know at least a little about the game. “Do you play, Neel?” he asked, surprising even himself.

Both of his friends gaped at him, but other man just shrugged. “You might have to remind me of some of the rules.”

Abigail recovered first. “Ooh, careful, Seb—sounds like you’re going to get hustled.”

Neel chuckled. “No, seriously, I know how to shoot pool, but I haven’t played 8-ball much. I’m fuzzy on the finer details.”

“What do you usually play?”

“We stick to cutthroat, since it’s a three-player game. Though I think Trisha and Brandy do 8-ball when it’s just the two of them, or when can find a couple of suckers to take them on as a pair.”

“So they’re the pool sharks?” Abigail asked.

“Hmm, no, that’s when someone goes, ‘Oh, no, I’ve never played. Would you teach me?’” Sebastian stared, because Neel’s expression had shifted for a moment into such complete innocence that if the man had responded like that to his initial challenge, he might have fallen for it. “I’m pretty sure Brandy starting conversations with ‘Bet you 50G I can kick your ass’ is not proper pool shark etiquette, nor is Trisha giving running calculations on your ever-decreasing odds of winning.”

Sam laughed. “So does that mean you lose as often as I do?”

Neel grinned at him. “The thing about a three-person game is that when two of the players are busy going after each other, sometimes the third can sneak in a win.”

“What is cutthroat, anyway?” Sebastian asked.

“Instead of stripes and solids, it’s low, middle, and high numbers. The biggest difference is you’re not trying to sink your own numbers—you go after everyone else’s. Once your balls are gone, you’re out of the game, unless someone scratches. Then everyone else gets to pull a ball out—” He paused to roll his eyes at Abigail, who was snickering. “Yeah, I know, it’s impossible to talk about pool without it sounding dirty. Anyway, last person with at least one of their numbers left on the table wins.”

“What do you say, Seb, want to give it a try?”

“Sure. How do you assign the groups?” Neel explained more of the rules as he racked the balls, and Sebastian offered him the break.

As they played, he sized up the newcomer. He was better than Sam—not that that was difficult—but Sebastian was pretty sure he would still win if it was just the two of them. Neel played with confidence, and his aim was good, but he kept under- or overshooting.

“So…” Neel said, as they both leaned against the wall waiting for Sam to make up his mind about his next move. “Robin mentioned you do freelance computer stuff, but she didn’t go into specifics. What kind of work do you do?”

Sebastian tried to grind a mental heel on his irritation; it was exactly the sort of small-talk question he hated. “Well, I spent most of today coding a module to protect a client’s site against brute-force password hacking.”

Most people looked at him blankly when he tried to describe his actual job, and then asked him if he could help them design a website or figure out their email. Neel tilted his head a little. “One of those ‘prove you’re a human’ things, or something more on the back end?”

Sebastian’s eyebrows rose. “Back end. They got too many customer complaints about the image-based tests. Are you a programmer, too?”

A headshake. “No, I’m only familiar with that sort of thing from the user side. Do you specialize in security?”

“I’m leaning toward it, for now. It pays well, and there’s less competition than for other project types on the freelancers’ site I get most of my jobs through. But I still take on other kinds of programming here and there, so I don’t get pigeonholed if the market shifts.”

“Good plan,” Neel said, picking up his stick as the ball Sam had been aiming for stopped just short of the pocket.

“What about you?” Sam said, as Neel took aim. “What do you do?”

“Mostly chop wood, so far. Diversifying by attempting to learn how to fish.” He pocketed the ball that Sam hadn’t quite managed to—one of Sebastian’s. He grinned at the two of them as he walked around the table to line up another shot. “But to answer the real question, I used to be an executive assistant at Joja HQ.” He missed his shot and stepped back from the table with a grimace.

Abigail was the only one who didn’t react with surprise to that; he must have told her while Sebastian and Sam had been preoccupied with their game. “Uh, no offense, but you don’t exactly look like the secretarial type,” his best friend said, eyeing the shorter man’s jeans and flannel shirt.

“Slacks and a tie aren’t exactly practical for farming.”

“How did you wind up with Joja, anyway?” Abigail asked. “You didn’t mention that part earlier.”

“Trisha got me in the door,” he said. “She’d been working there as an analyst for a couple of years, and the ‘temporary-to-permanent’ job I’d been working kept stringing me along about the permanent part, so when she heard about an opening in the float pool, she referred me.”

“Joja has lifeguards?” Sam asked, with a smirk to indicate he wasn’t serious.

Neel ignored the quip and answered the question behind it. “We filled in whenever someone on the regular staff was out sick or on vacation, or when a department needed extra short-term help. Still temping, basically, but with benefits. I developed a reputation as a quick study, which got me assigned to the executive group often enough that I was able to snag a permanent slot when someone I’d subbed for a few times left. You’re up, Sebastian.”

“Oh, right.” He sank his first shot, which left the cue ball fenced in behind a couple of his own numbers. He jumped it over, but his aim was off just enough that he couldn’t sink the ball he was aiming for.

“Damn, that was close. How come I can never get that trick to come off half as well?” Sam complained as he reached for his stick.

“Because I don’t try to launch the ball into space and make the shot on re-entry?”

Sam flipped him off before taking his—non-orbital—shot. “Hah, got one.”

“Well, crap, that was my last ball,” Neel said, surveying the table.

“Don’t worry, I’ll probably scratch soon enough,” Sam said. But though he did miss the next shot, he kept the white ball out of the pockets, and set Sebastian up perfectly to pick off the rest of Sam’s numbers. “Hey, that was fun! I sort of beat someone, for once. Want to play again?”

But Neel glanced up at the clock on the wall and shook his head. “Nah, I should probably call it a night.”

“It’s not even nine,” Abigail protested.

“Yeah, but I’ve been up since six a.m., and tomorrow’s not going to start any later,” he said, then smothered a yawn behind his hand. “Sorry. Not the company, I promise.”

“Thanks for the game—and the sashimi,” Sebastian said.

“You’re welcome, on both counts,” Neel said, yawning again. “Maybe we can do it again some time.”

“We’re usually here on Friday evenings,” Abigail chimed in. “Well, Sam and I are. Sebastian shows up sometimes, when he can tear himself away from his computers.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, with a quick flash of a grin. “Catch you around.” He returned his stick to the rack and left the arcade.

Sam was already re-racking the balls. “Hey, Abby, you want to try the new game?”

“Pfft. No thanks. I’m going to have another run at Prairie King.”

“No one to save you this time, Sam,” Sebastian said, picking up the chalk. “I’ll let you have the break, though.” He was glad his friends had insisted he join them tonight. He really had been letting his work take over his life, though he wished Abigail hadn’t chosen to bring up that fact in front of someone they barely knew.

At least Neel must not have mentioned Sebastian’s rude behavior the first time they’d met, or Abigail would be ribbing him about it.


	31. 06 Spring Y1 - Brandy

“I don’t think it’s going to stop,” Brandy said, looking out the window at the rain. All three of them were gathered in her cottage while they brought Neel up to speed on Trisha’s encounters the day before and the plan to explore the community center today.

“The weather forecast says it might clear up late this afternoon,” Neel said, not glancing up from the granola bar wrapper he was fiddling with. “At least this means we don’t have to water the crops today.”

Trisha joined her at the window and scowled at the grey skies. “Did I mention there were holes in the roof? The whole place is going to be a muddy mess,” she grumbled. “The scroll’s probably turned to mush by now. Although… now that I think about it, the room I saw it in wasn’t in as bad a shape as the rest of the building.”

“Well, then, let’s grab boots and umbrellas and go check it out,” Brandy said, turning away from the dreary view outside. She started threading her sword belt through her cargo pants.

“I don’t think you’ll need that,” Trisha said. “I told you the things I saw—”

“ _Seemed_ harmless. It’s not that I don’t believe you, sweetie, but there’s no sense in being careless.”

“I’m more concerned about our neighbors’ reactions if you go strolling through town armed,” Neel said. He held the wrapper out at arm’s length, then gave part of it a little twist, and the wad of foil became a silver flower, the printed side forming leaves around it. His ability to turn random crap into art or jewelry had always amazed Brandy, but it had been over a year since she had seen him make anything. “Do you have some tape or a stapler or anything like that?”

“No, that’s all with the movers,” Trisha said.

Another delay; they’d hoped to have their belongings delivered today, but the truck was going to have enough trouble with the dirt road when it wasn’t mud. “Would thread work? I’ve got a mending kit in my suitcase,” Brandy offered.

“I doubt it.” He set the wrapper-rose on the table, where it started losing its shape at once. “No big deal—it’d probably attract bugs, anyway.” He gathered up the rest of the debris from his and Brandy’s breakfasts and deposited it in the trash bag. “Look, I’m _not_ spending the whole day cooped up in here with you two. Willy bet me 100G I couldn’t catch a catfish before the end of the week, and from what I’ve read they’re most active on rainy days. If we’re going to check out your mystery, let’s go now.”

“We might as well,” Trisha said. She picked up her clear vinyl raincoat, then hesitated. “Brandy, you weren’t carrying that sword around town yesterday, were you?”

“How careless do you think I am? I stashed it in a bush by the mines while I went to the clinic, then came home by the back road. Don’t worry—I have a plan.” She shook out the packet of fabric she had bought at JojaMart the day before to reveal a long black rain poncho, the cheap disposable kind. When she put it on, it hung just past the tip of the sword. “It’ll be awkward if I have to draw in a hurry, but unless it gets really windy, this should be fine for town.” She grabbed her umbrella, and the others followed her outside.

As they passed Trisha’s cabin, however, they paused. The mailbox flag was up, and… “Are my eyes playing tricks on me, or is my mailbox glowing?” Trisha asked. Brandy rubbed her own eyes; faint light really was leaking from around the box’s door.

“No, I see it, too,” said Neel. He leaned over the porch rail to tug it open even as Brandy swore and tried to stop him.

“You don’t know what’s inside,” she hissed at him when he gave her a confused look.

“Sure I do. Mail. Glowing mail, sure, but it’s just an envelope. Probably some new marketing gimmick.” He pulled it out; Trisha’s name was written on the front in metallic, sky-blue ink on dark blue paper. “Must be a local business—there’s no street address. Gotta love small towns, huh?” He handed it to Trisha.

Trisha turned it over, and Brandy tensed as her friend’s hands started shaking. “Grandpa sealed his letters to me like this,” she said, her fingers brushing the blob of red wax making a dark spot in the light leaking from the flap. She retreated to the shelter of the front porch and set her umbrella aside. “It even looks a lot like the seal he used, though this has an R instead of a P.” She slid a finger under the flap, tearing the paper without breaking the seal.

The glow stopped as soon as she took out a sheet of stationary that matched the envelope. “‘My sources tell me you’ve been poking around inside the old community center,’” she read aloud. “‘Why don’t you pay me a visit? My chambers are west of the forest lake, in the stone tower. I may have information concerning your… “rat problem”.’ It’s signed ‘M. Rasmodius, Wizard.’”

“Ugh. This is all some sort of creepy reality show, isn’t it?” Brandy muttered. “Do they actually expect us to fall for this?”

Trisha chewed her lip. “Even if your ‘snot monster’ was some sort of special effect, chemical burns are a bit far for a prank to go,” she said at last. “Whatever’s going on, I don’t think it’s for TV—the insurance rates would be astronomical.”

“What does that leave us, then?” Brandy asked.

“I can think of a few possibilities. First: it _is_ for TV, or at least streaming online—some local would-be stars who don’t know enough about the business to have thought about risk and insurance. Second: someone’s trying to scare us off—”

“In which case they obviously didn’t take me into consideration,” Brandy said.

Trisha cleared her throat. “They’re trying to scare us off by manufacturing some sort of local ghost story. Third—”

“Third, there really is something peculiar going on,” Neel said, leaning farther over the rail. “Because that wasn’t there when I came over this morning. It was even darker, so I definitely would have noticed the light. But there aren’t any footprints around the mailbox.”

“It’s not raining hard enough to have washed the prints away, either. I can still see mine from when I walked to Brandy’s house,” Trisha said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean there’s anything supernatural going on, but someone’s sure going to a lot of trouble to make it seem that way.”

“So, what are we doing, Trisha?” Neel asked. She and Brandy looked at him, and he shrugged. “The letter was addressed to you, and you were the one who went into the community center. Do we explore it like we’d planned, or go meet this ‘wizard’? I saw that tower while I was fishing yesterday, and it’s not far.”

Trisha looked back down at the letter, and her eyes widened. “This looks like the creature I saw,” she said, pointing to the corner, where a lopsided smiley face with a stick and leaf coming out of its top had been drawn. “All right, let’s go talk to this Rasmodius character.”

“Okay, sweetie. If this is a set-up, at least we’ll have a better idea of how the story’s supposed to go.” Brandy hesitated, but unbuckled the sword belt and dropped it off in her cabin. Her umbrella had a sturdy enough handle to be an improvised club, if necessary.

As they neared the stone tower, however, she began to have second thoughts. “One of us should stay outside, just in case. Neel, you wait out of sight, and I’ll call you, like yesterday.” But when she pulled out her phone, she realized that was easier said than done. “No cell service. Abigail mentioned something about that. Shit. I really don’t like the idea of going in without a way to contact the outside world.”

“We could make our own network,” Trisha suggested. “You can share audio and video between phones on the same wi-fi, even if there’s no internet connection.”

“Good idea!” Brandy said. The range, however, was awfully short, even using Trisha’s latest-model phone as a halfway point. “Neel would be right out in the open.”

“What if I went home for my fishing gear?” he offered. “The dock on the lake should be close enough, and I’ll have an obvious reason to be sitting there.”

“Hah, I knew we kept you around for a reason,” Brandy said. “Grab some plastic bags for the phones, while you’re at it.”

When he returned, Brandy set her phone to video chat and started a session with Neel, then made sure her incoming volume was muted. He put in one wireless earbud and walked out to the dock while they hid Trisha’s phone in the crook of a tree. “We’re not exactly being subtle about this,” Trisha pointed out.

“If they play it differently knowing that we’re on to them, that’s also good to know,” Brandy said. She glanced back once more at Neel, who gave her a thumbs-up. “Let’s do this.”


	32. 06 Spring Y1 - Abigail

Abigail settled into her favorite spot by the lake, beneath the broad boughs of a large pine tree that would shelter her from the steady drizzle, and opened her flute case. She fitted the pieces together and raised the instrument to her lips, closing her eyes as she listened to the faint hiss of rain on the water’s surface. Frogs called in the distance, providing a louder, irregular chorus, and after a few minutes she began to play, trying to fit the notes around the sounds of the mountain.

She was finally finding her way into a melody when she took another breath and the acrid smell of tobacco smoke made her cough. She opened her eyes and saw Sebastian standing farther down the shore.

He stooped to snuff out the cigarette. “Sorry. I thought I was far enough downwind not to bother you, but the breeze shifted.” He dropped the butt into the pocket ashtray he always carried and walked toward her, stopping just outside the shelter of the branches. He wasn’t dressed for the rain—or rather, he _was_ dressed for it, Sebastian-style, which meant he hadn’t even bothered to put up the hood of his sweatshirt. The black cotton was just beginning to show damp patches, so he hadn’t been out here long.

“See any frogs?” she asked with a grin. She liked the aura of mystery and gloom of a good rainy day, but she’d never understood Sebastian’s willingness to get soaked to the skin.

“There’s dozens of tadpoles in the little inlet over there,” he said, pointing, “but I haven’t seen any adults today. They’re all singing from the shadows.”

“Stage fright, maybe?” The corners of his mouth quirked upward for a moment, and she leaned back against the tree. This was as close to happy as she had seen her friend since… sometime in Fall, at least. Or perhaps “content” might be a better word, like the rain had washed away a little of whatever that had him so on edge lately.

Before she could try to angle the conversation toward finding out what that was, he turned away. “I’ll leave you to your music. I’m going to head down to the docks to watch the storm roll in.”

“Are you coming to band practice later?” It was the wrong thing to say, though she had no idea why such a mild comment made him tense up.

“Yeah, I’ll see you there,” he said, and started walking.

She wanted to call him back, ask what was going on, but that would only push him farther away. Abigail bit her lip and stared down at her flute, her fingers working over the keys.

She had barely raised the instrument again when she heard a door slam. She looked up to see Maru standing in front of the house, holding a pair of umbrellas. She spotted Abigail and opened one of them as she walked over. “Did you see where Sebastian went? I thought he was coming right back in after he finished his smoke break,” she said, wrinkling her nose and holding up the still-folded umbrella. “If he went into town, he forgot this.”

Abigail refrained from rolling her eyes, though the effort was almost painful. “He didn’t forget,” she said. “He never carries one.”

“He’s going to make himself sick,” the younger woman fretted.

This time Abigail didn’t bother to restrain her exasperation. “You work for a doctor, Maru. You know rain doesn’t cause colds.”

“No, but getting chilled can weaken the immune system, which leads to a greater risk of illness,” she retorted.

“It’s never bothered Sebastian. He does this every time it rains, and he’s one of the healthiest people in the valley.” Physically, at any rate. Even Sam was worried about the way their friend had been pulling away from them, and “Sam” and “worry” went together like peanut butter and ketchup.

“But—”

“If you chase after him with that umbrella, it’s going to wind up in the nearest trash can.”

Sebastian’s stepsister sighed. “You’re probably right.”

There was no “probably” about it, but she held her tongue.

As the silence between them began to stretch awkwardly, Maru started to turn away, then hesitated. “Oh, hey, Abigail?”

“Yeah?”

“Sebastian mentioned you collect quartz. I had some interesting-looking pieces left over after doing some refining for a project of mine, and I was wondering if you’d like this?” She held out a piece of cloudy crystal with a shape echoed that of the mountain range behind them.

Abigail had skipped breakfast so she could slip out of the house before her parents could decide she looked bored and needed some extra chores, and she hoped the sudden rumbling of her stomach wasn’t audible over the rain. “That is pretty cool.” Maru dropped it into her hand, and she turned it over a few times before stashing it in her pocket. “Thanks.”

She had expected Maru to go back inside, her unexpected gift delivered, but instead she lingered under the branches. “So… have you met the new farmers yet?”

“Two out of three,” Abigail said. “I haven’t run into the one that actually owns the place, though my parents have.”

“Same here—well, Mom was there to greet her when they all arrived, and then she spent a few days doing construction on the farm. I don’t think Dad has met Trisha. It sounds like she’s about as social as Sebastian. Her friends are nice, though.”

“Yeah. Neel was at the saloon last night, and even Seb warmed up to him a bit.” Maru’s eyes widened, and Abigail recounted the newcomer’s sashimi misadventure. “So in the grand scheme of things, raw fish makes a way better present for your stepbrother than an umbrella he’ll never use.”

Maru’s head tilted. “So, if Trisha’s like Sebastian, and Neel’s as outgoing as Sam… does that make Brandy their Abigail?”

The comparison drew a startled laugh from her. “Oh, I wish. She’s so cool! But I think she’s more like a girl-Sam. She’s the one who’s been running around introducing herself to everyone. Neel’s friendly enough, but when I first got to the saloon he was more interested his phone than anything else, so maybe he’s more like me.”

“But she dyes her hair even brighter than yours,” Maru said, “and I saw her poking around the mines yesterday.”

Abigail’s eyes widened. “Really? Did she say anything to you about it?”

Maru shook her head. “I was out getting some soil samples for Dad when I saw her go in, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to her since then.” She chewed on her lip for a moment, then added, “I did see Marlon coming out of there a few minutes later, though. And Mom mentioned she and Dad saw her leaving the clinic yesterday afternoon when they were on their way to the saloon. Mom didn’t know about the mines, so she assumed Brandy was just making an appointment for her physical or something. And maybe she was—I’m sure Mom would have said if she looked like she was injured.” She gave the guild cabin an uneasy glance.

“I don’t think Marlon would hurt her,” Abigail said. “I am surprised he didn’t chase her out, though. He and Gil act like it’s their Yoba-given duty to keep everyone away from there.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen them there a couple of times, when I was looking for minerals. Just in the upper cavern! They don’t get snippy unless you start getting near the actual mine shaft, or the broken-down elevator.”

“Yeah, Sebastian’s mentioned he goes in there, sometimes, when he’s tired of people getting on his case about smoking in public.”

Maru grimaced. “I really wish he’d quit. The rain might be debatable, but that’s _definitely_ not good for him.” She glanced sidelong at Abigail. “And yeah, I know better than to say anything about it to him. I wish Dad would figure that out.”

Abigail sometimes wondered if her friend had picked up that particular habit in an attempt to make himself repulsive enough to keep people away, but that was hardly something she was going to say to his stepsister. Sebastian’s relationship with his family was rocky enough without her butting in, however good her intentions. She looked down at the flute in her hands.

Maru followed her glance. “Oh! I’m interrupting, aren’t I? Sorry, I’ll let you get back to your music.” She returned to her house.

As Abigail tried to find her way back into the tune of the mountain, she wondered what all that had been about. Maru being worried about Sebastian wasn’t that weird, but it felt like she’d been looking for an excuse to extend the conversation. She must have decided that getting to know her stepbrother’s friends might give her some insight into him. Abigail wished her luck; she felt like she knew her oldest friend a little less every day.

The weight in her pocket was distracting, and finally she couldn’t take it any longer. She tucked her flute under one arm and pulled out the crystal. The shape really was interesting, and Maru was the sort of person who’d be hurt if she ever saw Abigail’s “collection” and didn’t find her own gift among it, but she was _hungry_.

She was also, she realized, being watched. She turned her head and saw old Linus sitting just inside his tent. He raised a hand and nodded shyly. He didn’t talk much to the villagers, and Sebastian said that when his mother had offered to build him a little cabin of his own, he had declined, saying he liked living so close to nature. But when she played her flute by the lake, he was usually there, too, listening from a distance.

She smiled and waved back at him, the quartz still clutched in her hand. She doubted anyone would believe him if he said he’d seen her eating rocks, but she wasn’t going to take the chance. She slipped the crystal back into her pocket and resigned herself to letting her stomach provide a bass line to her tune as she raised the flute back to her lips and once again sought the music in the rain.


	33. 06 Spring Y1 - Neel

Neel assembled his fishing rod but cast the line without baiting the hook; he didn’t want to be distracted by catching anything, despite Willy’s challenge. He placed his phone, now sealed in a plastic baggie, in his lap where he could see it without it being obvious to anyone who might happen to pass by. He was overdue for a haircut, but his hair wasn’t quite long enough to hide the earbud completely, so he rehearsed a quick explanation that he was listening to music. He settled into his role— _just a guy fishing from the dock, nothing interesting to see here, folks_ —and lowered his gaze to the phone’s screen.

Brandy’s hand rose to knock on the door of the tower, but it swung open before she made contact with the wood. “Ah… Come in.” The man’s voice was distant, but Neel could just make out the words. He thought Brandy and Trisha exchanged a glance, based on how the camera shifted, but then Brandy entered the building, turning slowly to give him a view of the whole space.

The room looked… exactly like what one would expect a “wizard’s” home to look like. Vapor rose from a large black pot set over what he hoped was either a gas range in the floor or a very convincing theatrical “fire.” On the other side of the room, several crystal balls sat on a table, and behind that a circular diagram had been drawn on a section of the floor had stone tiles instead of wood planks. The flames beneath the cauldron and the candles around the diagram were the only sources of light. In the middle of the room…

The man that stepped forward to greet his visitors wore a flowing black robe with gold embroidery, which fit the role, but someone needed to have a word with the costuming department, because “mystical cowboy hat” was a peculiar choice.

“I am Rasmodius… Seeker of the arcane truths. Mediary between physical and ethereal. Master of the seven elementals. Keeper of the sacred cha—” Even in the dim and unsteady light, Neel could make out the change in the man’s expression, and he suspected he knew exactly what sort of impatient looks Trisha and Brandy must be giving him. “You get the point,” he said. He took a few steps closer, his gaze going somewhere past Brandy. “And you… Trisha Curtis. The one whose arrival I have long foreseen.”

“What am I, chopped liver?” Brandy muttered.

Rasmodius gave her a considering glance. “You are an unexpected complication,” he said. “I would have preferred Miss Curtis come alone, but I cannot fault your caution. Here, I’d like to show you something.” He turned toward the diagram on the floor. “Behold!” Light flashed at his fingertips, and an image appeared in the center of the circle: a creature that looked like a large green apple with twigs for arms and legs and a stem coming out of the top of its head. “You’ve seen one before, haven’t you?” he asked as it bounced slowly in place.

Neel’s eyes narrowed as he stared at his phone screen. He could think of several ways to rig a special effect like that, but it had certainly _looked_ magical. _Someone is really pulling out all the stops for this._

“That’s what I saw in the community center!” Neel could hear the relief in Trisha’s voice; even if this was a prank—or worse—it confirmed that she wasn’t having hallucinations.

The man nodded. “They call themselves the ‘Junimos’… Mysterious spirits, these ones… For some reason, they refuse to speak with me.” He waved his hand again and the “Junimo” disappeared. “I’m not sure why they’ve moved into the community center, but you have no reason to fear them.”

“Are they related to the things I saw in the mine?” Brandy said. “Because if so I’m going to have to disagree about the ‘no reason to fear them’ part.”

The “wizard’s” gaze sharpened as he turned toward Brandy. “You have ventured into the old mine? That place is guarded against intruders.”

She snorted. “So go complain to that asshole Marlon. He shoved a rusty old sword into my hands and all but dared me to go down there.”

The man’s eyebrows rose. “Did he? Well, he is apt at recognizing the potential of a warrior. If he judged you worthy of such a trial, I shall not second-guess him. To answer your query, however, there is no connection I have been able to determine between the Junimo and the slimes and sludges that infest the mines, despite some superficial similarities in their appearances. The former are spirit beings, though they are capable of interacting with the material realm to a limited extent, while the latter are bound to the material world.”

“These slimes—” Brandy began, but Rasmodius held up a hand.

“If you would know more of the corrupted things that lurk in the mines, you should ask Marlon,” he said. “It is Miss Curtis and her encounters that I would address today. Did the Junimo attempt any sort of communication with you?”

“When I first went into the building with Mayor Lewis, all they did was bounce around behind his back and disappear whenever he turned toward them,” Trisha said. “When I went back later, alone, I found another… Junimo, you called it? Anyway, it was a different color than the one I saw with the mayor, and it disappeared like the other when I got near, but it left a scroll behind. It didn’t look like it had been on the floor for very long, because the edges of it were still a shiny gold, and there wasn’t any dust on its surface. I couldn’t read it, though; the writing was hard to focus on and didn’t look like any alphabet I’ve seen before.”

“Hmm, a golden scroll written in an unknown language? Most interesting.” He took a few more steps toward the camera, which moved as though Brandy had backed up in response. “Stay here. I’m going to see for myself. I’ll return shortly.” He raised a hand and closed his eyes—

And vanished.

“What the fuck!” Brandy spun to face Trisha. “Did he just—”

“Check the floor for a trap door,” the other woman said, but she sounded uncertain. “I’ll look for mirrors around the room—if he wasn’t actually standing there in the first place…”

Neel had to look away from his phone screen after a few minutes; the way the camera jerked around as Brandy searched the room was making him dizzy. Or perhaps that was the way the air around him had turned dense, pulsing oddly—

He bit back an exclamation as the space in front of the tower’s door wavered like a heat mirage, and the man his friends had been speaking with moments before appeared. In the bright sunlight, Neel could see that his hair was a deep purple, darker than Abigail’s but a similar hue. Rasmodius staggered and braced himself against the stone wall for a moment before straightening and walking back inside.

Neel stared after him, then turned back to his phone as he heard Brandy gasp. “Where did you—”

“I found the note,” he said without preamble. “The language is obscure, but I was able to decipher it: ‘We, the Junimo, are happy to aid you. In return, we ask for gifts of the valley. If you are one with the forest then you will see the true nature of this scroll.’” He moved over to the iron pot and stared into it, ignoring both Trisha and Brandy as they tried to ask about his disappearing act. “Hmm. ‘One with the forest’… what do they mean?” He took a deep breath, and his head jerked up. “Ah-hah! Come here!” he said, beckoning to Trisha. “My cauldron is bubbling with ingredients from the forest. Baby fern, moss grub, caramel-top toadstool… Can you smell it?” The camera angle didn’t let Neel see Trisha’s expression, but from the way she recoiled, it was not a pleasant odor. Rasmodius picked up a wooden mug and dipped it in the pot. “Here. Drink up. Let the essence of the forest permeate your body.”

Trisha turned around, and Neel could see an echo of his own fury flare in her eyes.


	34. 06 Spring Y1 - Trisha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note: Brief, non-graphic description of vomiting/nausea in this chapter.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Trisha snarled as the man’s words sank in. “Come on, Brandy, I got enough of this crap in high school to last a lifetime.” She stalked toward the door.

“Wait!” the man said as she reached for the door handle. “If I have given some offense, I—”

She spun back toward him. “‘If’? Did you think this would be funny? Or _original?_ Like I haven’t heard every possible ‘plant-person’ joke a hundred times before?”

“I—you—what?” His pompous arrogance had been replaced by confusion; either he was as good an actor as Neel or he truly didn’t understand why this would piss her off. Some of her classmates had been that way, expecting her to join in the “fun.”

“I am so incredibly done with people who think dryad syndrome is a joke,” she snapped. “So you can take your ‘essence of the forest’ and shove it up your ass!”

He held up the hand not clutching the mug of reeking green goo in a placating gesture. “Miss Curtis, I am afraid you have lost me. Dryads, I have heard of, though my studies lead me to believe they are myth, rather than numbering among the true forest elementals. But this syndrome you speak of—”

“Oh, so you just figured this ‘forest magic’ crap was a good prank to play on the green girl?”

“Green?”

“Uh, Trish, in this light, you’re kind of… not,” Brandy interjected. “He really might not know, if no one told him.”

Trisha held out her arm. She was so used to her own appearance that she hadn’t noticed the way the red-orange firelight washed the other colors out of her skin. She took a deep breath and tried to rein in her anger. “Let’s assume I believe you—and I’m not saying I do. If you really didn’t know about my condition, why are you so focused on me for this ‘one with the forest’ business, and not, say, Brandy here.”

The man rubbed his hand over his beard. “In part, due to the fact that the Junimo appeared to you, when they have remained unseen to any but myself for decades, and that they have refused all my attempts to communicate yet left you with the scroll you discovered. But primarily, because you are Patrick’s granddaughter, and he was the last sage of the forest.”

She stared at him. “You knew my grandfather? What do you mean, a ‘sage’? He practically raised me—I think I’d know if he was some sort of wizard!”

Rasmodius sighed. “He wasn’t, any longer, by the time you were born.”

“What, did he run out of forest muck?” Brandy said, jerking her chin toward the cauldron. “Trisha, you’re not buying this, are you?”

 _Of course not_ hovered behind her lips, but she restrained the instinctive denial. Grandpa Pat had always chided her, as a child, for jumping to conclusions before gathering all the data—and from the moment she had learned of her unexpected inheritance, it had been clear there was a lot she hadn’t known about him. Even her mother had only known about the farm as a probably-a-tax-shelter hobby project, and had been surprised to learn he hadn’t sold it long ago, let alone that he had left it to her daughter. “Go on,” she told the wizard.

“Trisha!”

She looked at Brandy and shrugged. “Well, why didn’t Grandpa tell me about the farm?” She looked at Rasmodius.

He swept a hand at the cauldron. “This is only a catalyst—a single dose for a lifetime effect, if you will. But magic has a cost. Many years ago, the sages of the valley cast a powerful spell, and the price was our magic itself. Among us, only I retain any trace of power, and that is only a tiny fraction of what I once held.”

“Why you?” Brandy asked. “And if you actually teleported out of the room a little while ago, I’m calling bullshit on the ‘tiny fraction’ bit.”

His response was a quiet huff of laughter. “I realize it looks impressive, but it does not take much in the way of _strength_ , only skill. As to why… because the nature of my gifts meant that my role was to connect the pieces of the others’ work, and to keep watch over the results, once it was complete. I would gladly give over that burden, but thus far I have found no one who might take on that mantle.”

“So you want me to drink that gunk and take your place?” Trisha said.

He shook his head. “No, Miss Curtis, it is your grandfather’s role you would assume, if I am correct about your having the potential. His was the forest; I was the sage of the sky.” He held out the cup. “I can assure you, while the ingredients I named might sound intimidating, they are all perfectly harmless. If you have no power to awaken, the worst you will endure is a bit of an unpleasant taste.”

“And puking,” Trisha said. “Do you have a bucket handy? There’s definitely going to be puking.”

Brandy grabbed her arm and pulled her aside. “You’re not seriously considering this?” she hissed.

“I know it seems absurd, but I don’t think he’s lying,” Trisha said, her voice just as low.

Brandy stared at her for a long moment. “And you keep calling _me_ reckless.” She turned to Rasmodius. “Hey, wizard dude. What happens if I drink that stuff?”

His eyebrows rose. “Unless you also carry the potential of a forest sage—and I very much doubt that you do—nothing. Aside from the unpleasant taste I mentioned.”

“What, because I’m not woodsy enough?”

“Because my brother would not have given you that sword if you had any trace of magic about you,” he said acerbically.

“Marlon’s your brother? Does being a mysterious asshole run in the family?”

“Perhaps,” he said, with a twitch of facial hair that might have been a smile. “Do you intend to play food tester for your friend, then?”

“Apparently yes,” she said, and took the cup. She sipped cautiously and made a face as she handed it back to him. “Blech. You have a gift for understatement. That shit is _nasty_.”

It occurred to Trisha that Neel was still outside, watching all of this, and was vaguely surprised that he hadn’t already stormed up to the door. But nothing happened as time passed.

“Are you satisfied?” Rasmodius asked after several minutes had gone by in tense silence.

“I’m pretty sure it’s not drugged or poisoned,” Brandy said.

Trisha sighed. “Fine. About that bucket?”

“It’s harmless—”

“I have dryad syndrome,” she said. “My skin is green because I have chlorophyll in my cells. I get almost all my calories from photosynthesis, and the only ‘food’ I’ve been able to keep down since I hit adolescence are these special nutrient blends cooked up in a lab, with all the nonessential organics stripped out. If I drink that stuff, it’s _going_ to come back up.”

“I must admit, I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

Trisha sighed and rattled off the short-form explanation she’d polished through all too many repetitions. “It’s an incredibly rare condition involving multiple recessive genes. It’s _so_ rare it’s not part of any of the standard screens, and neither of my parents had any idea they were carriers. Can we get this over with?”

Rasmodius started to hand her the cup, then paused. “If I hadn’t been so invested in creating a suitable atmosphere, some of these misunderstandings might have been avoided,” he said, and touched something hidden between the stones of the wall.

In the sudden, bright light of modern bulbs in well-concealed fixtures, the wizard’s hair and beard were revealed to be dark purple, not the brown she had assumed, and he looked at Trisha with no little shock. “I can see why you were so irritated with me earlier.” He opened a door on one side of the room. “Here is the bathroom, if you need it.”

“Ugh. Okay, give me that.” She held her breath as she brought the cup to her lips, but the stench still found its way up her nostrils. She took a sip.

It wasn’t vile. It tasted like—

_—the scent of spring flowers, thick and sweet as honey—_

_—warm summer rain soaking into the parched ground—_

_—the crunch of autumn leaves beneath her feet—_

_—the frozen peace of a forest blanketed in snow—_

“…going on? What did you do to…”

A voice drifted to her ears, from some great distance, and she tried to reassure her friend, but she couldn’t feel her lips move, couldn’t feel her body…

“…means it’s working…”

No, it was more that she couldn’t pick out the part of her awareness that was her voice, couldn’t tell where she ended and the forest surrounding her began. Branches creaked as she tried again to speak, swaying against the fitful wind that whispered around her—

Her expanding senses brushed against something _not_ of the woods, bitter chill and searing heat… spears of light and shards of darkness burst through her awareness like pins in a soap bubble, and all at once she was simply herself, kneeling on a hardwood floor with Brandy’s arms supporting her shoulders. “Trisha! Come on, sweetie, talk to me.”

“I’m all right—” Her stomach picked that moment to inform her that ferns and toadstools and whatever the Void else had been in that cup were _not_ on the medically approved list, and she clapped a hand to her mouth. “I take that back,” she managed to choke out, and then Brandy was half-carrying her to the bathroom.

When her nausea settled—which fortunately didn’t take long, since she hadn’t drunk much of the concoction and it had been long enough since her breakfast shake that her stomach had been empty—she rinsed her face and studied her reflection in the mirror. There were no physical changes she could see, but she felt… different, in a way she couldn’t find words for.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Trisha?” Brandy asked, handing her the towel.

She wasn’t asking only about the state of her stomach. “I think so. That was… weird.”

“Neel has got to be absolutely freaking out,” her friend said more quietly, and Trisha winced.

“Yeah. Let’s wrap this up and go calm him down.” Or they could tell Rasmodius about the camera feed… no, best to keep that in reserve.

The modern lighting should have dispelled the uncanny aura of the room they returned to, but somehow the juxtaposition only made the trappings of magic seem less like a movie set. The wizard—and she was convinced, now, that he was just that—waved them over to the table near the door. “I must apologize for the distress I’ve put you through, Miss Curtis,” he began as they sat down.

“At this point, I think you can call me Trisha,” she said.

He inclined his head, but didn’t volunteer what the “M” he had signed his letter with stood for. “Unfortunately, the only method I know of to awaken a potential magician’s abilities if they have not done so on their own requires ingesting such a potion, aligned to the individual’s affinities.”

Trisha frowned. “You keep using different terms—wizard, sage, now magician. Do they all mean the same thing?”

He offered her a wry smile. “There’s hardly a consensus of terminology, since those of us with this power are rare, and tend to keep to our own little corners of the world. I use ‘magician’ to indicate anyone with magical ability, however slight or untrained, while a ‘wizard’ is someone who has studied their power and learned to control it. ‘Sage,’ however… The word has many meanings, the most common being a person of great wisdom, but it has a definition unique to Stardew Valley. That, however, is something that can wait until another day. I would suggest you take some time to explore the valley, see how your awareness of it may have changed, before returning to hear more.”

Brandy raised an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you teach her how to control these new abilities she supposedly has?”

“There will be time enough for lessons later. Were her affinity for fire rather than wood, I might be concerned, but contrary to what popular media may like to portray, most magic does not simply ‘burst out.’ To study it is to learn to draw upon it, not to restrain it.” He turned back to Trisha. “When you feel up to it, return to the community center and see if your perception of the Juminos’ scroll has changed. I would be most curious to know what its ‘true nature’ is.”

“All right. I suppose we ought to be going, then.” Neel was waiting to chew the two of them out, Trisha thought; best to face the music right away. She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination or the “changed awareness” Rasmodius had spoken of, but the rain-dimmed sunlight on her face as she stepped out of the tower felt even more welcome than usual.


	35. 06 Spring Y1 - Sebastian

Sebastian loved the rain.

In part, that was because he made it all the way from the mountain lake to the pier on the beach without encountering anyone else. The town square was deserted; he hadn’t even caught a glimpse of any neighbors darting between buildings or glaring through their windows at the clouds blanketing the sky in soft grey. This kind of weather washed away everyone in town, sweeping them back into their homes where they wouldn’t bother him.

Light shone through windows on the beach, from both the boathouse-turned-rental-cabin and the fish shop on the pier itself, but Elliott had finally gotten enough of a clue to leave him alone, and Willy would be inside, minding the sales counter. Even if the fisherman did emerge with his pole, the only time he ever approached Sebastian was to borrow his lighter if the rain was too heavy to light his pipe with the matches he carried. Since the fisherman was one of the few people who never hassled Sebastian about his own smoking, he didn’t mind the minor intrusion.

For now, Sebastian had the pier to himself. He stopped at the end of the weathered boards, closed his eyes, and turned his face upward. The chill and darkness of Winter didn’t bother him much, even one as harsh as the previous one had been, but _this_ , he had missed; snowflakes stung his cheeks rather than caressing his skin the way raindrops did. The absence of people on days like this was nice, but mostly, he loved the rain for its own sake, and welcomed its return in Spring.

Each year, though, it seemed a little harder to let the rain wash away the tension that knotted his shoulders. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes and gazed across the ocean. Why had he told Abigail he was going to watch the storm? He knew the patterns in the clouds as well as—or better than—the forecasters on TV, and there was nothing from here to the horizon but the same gentle rain showers.

And why had her mention of the jam session later that day felt like a blast of desert air, hot and choking? Playing music was almost as good as rain for pushing his worries aside for a while. Perhaps, he thought, flexing his fingers as if they hovered over a keyboard, it was some weird sort of envy, that she could have both at once, even if she preferred to stay huddled under a tree instead. Should he pick up a second instrument, something more portable—and water-resistant—than a piano or synthesizer?

He shook his head in irritation, feeling the damp strands of his hair settle more firmly against his right cheek. It wasn’t that, or at least, it wasn’t _just_ that. He couldn’t see a storm approaching, and the forecast didn’t call for one, but the air held the same sense of anticipation. Or maybe that was all in his head, bracing for whatever it was that had him on edge today. He shut his eyes and tried to concentrate on the sound of the waves, the feel of the water running down his face and hair and soaking into his clothes. It was Spring, and the rain had returned, and that should make everything better, shouldn’t it?

Light flared red against his closed eyelids, and he opened them, startled. Had that been lightning, after all? But there was no answering rumble of thunder, and aside from a faint green afterimage, quickly blinked away, the sky remained a flat, soft grey. He thought the flash had come from his right, but though he scanned the shoreline and the edge of the forest where it met the beach, there was no sign of whatever it had been.

The mystery left him feeling even more unsettled, and it was almost a relief when his phone buzzed in his back pocket to announce it was time to meet up with Sam and Abigail. He ran his hands through his hair, dislodging some of the rainwater soaking it. As he watched the heavier drops splash against the dock, one possible explanation for his earlier discomfort surfaced: Sam’s mother was going to be pissed at him for dripping across her living room floor, and though she and his mom weren’t close friends, it was bound to come up the next time they had their aerobics class together. Sebastian sighed. Maybe he _should_ start carrying an umbrella, even if he only used it to give his clothes a chance to dry on his way back from the beach.

He wrung out his sweatshirt as best he could without taking it off as he turned and walked back up the pier. As he lowered his hands from squeezing the hood, a hint of blue in the corner of his vision caught his attention. His footsteps slowed as he turned toward the tide pools, cut off from the rest of the beach since the bridge had washed out last summer. No one was in a hurry to fix it, and the most likely reason for that was the hazy figure standing where the bluff rose up from the sand—the old mariner, as everyone called him. Demetrius dismissed the phenomenon as some sort of optical illusion, but Sebastian had also noticed that his stepfather avoided the beach on rainy days, rather than try to figure out the cause of that “mirage” like a proper scientist.

Sebastian had no idea how anyone could look across the beach and have any doubts that the ghost was real, for all that the apparition wavered with the rainfall, as if he only existed in the raindrops themselves. He supposed it _could_ be some sort of video projection, but town legends said the old mariner had been at his post for a lot longer than that sort of technology had existed—and at least half of every married couple in town had more direct proof, having exchanged gold for a gift only a ghost in the rain could provide. Sebastian was used to the spirit’s presence, since he avoided the beach when the sun was out, but he felt a fresh chill now, because the old mariner wasn’t staring out across the sea, as he usually did.

Sebastian ducked his head and hurried across the sand toward the bridge to town, his sneakers squelching in the sand. He pulled up the sodden hood of his sweatshirt as his footsteps pounded on the stone bridge, to hide his expression from anyone else who happened by.

Had the old mariner been watching for the same flash of light he thought he had seen? That must be it. Why else would would the ghost have been looking his way? Sebastian had no business with him, and he doubted he ever would.


	36. 06 Spring Y1 - Trisha

The water dripping through the holes in the roof tapped out an unsteady rhythm as Trisha eased open the door of the community center. “Wow, this place is a mess,” Brandy muttered as she swept her phone’s flashlight around the main room.

“I did warn you,” Trisha said, extracting her own phone from her purse and setting it to record video. Beside her, Neel scanned the room in silence. She had expected him to flip out at the two of them when they returned from Rasmodius’s tower, but though he had informed them curtly that they were both reckless beyond belief, the sudden appearance of another person on the path toward town had caused him to fall silent on the subject, even after they’d concluded their brief chat with Marnie. “I doubt anyone’s going to wander in on us here,” she said, locking the door. “Want to finish chewing us out now, Neel?”

He shrugged, his face unreadable. “Kind of pointless, since you already drank the wizard’s weird potion.” He shifted the bunch of daffodils he’d collected along the path into his other hand and added his phone’s light to the room.

“What did it look like from your end?” Brandy asked.

““I’m… inclined to give all this weird crap the benefit of the doubt, at least,” he said.

Trisha studied him in the shifting glow of their flashlights. “I would have expected you to be a lot more skeptical about this.” Not to mention yelling, or at least muttering angrily, at her and Brandy, rather than calmly stopping to gather wildflowers as they walked to the community center, no matter how good a price Marnie said Pierre would give them for quality specimens.

Another shrug. “The guy appeared out of nowhere in front of the tower before going back in, and I don’t think that was a show for my sake, since it didn’t sound like he had any idea I was there.” A flicker of some emotion crossed his face, gone before she could even begin to guess at it. “Anyway, are these ‘Junimo’ things still hanging around? And where’s the scroll you were going on about?”

“I can’t see any of them right now,” Trisha said, looking around again. “But the scroll was in another room—follow me.” She led the way down the hall and peeked around the doorframe. “It’s back,” she whispered. “I think it’s the same one I saw in here earlier. It’s the same color, anyway.” It bounced in place as she watched, and she thought she heard the faintest trace of a sound from it, something like a giggle.

“Where?” Brandy eased past her in the hall, the angle of her arm under her poncho suggesting she wished she’d gone back to her cabin for the sword.

“Right there, on the other side of the scroll,” she said. “The bright orange ball.”

Brandy inhaled sharply. “Trish… I can see the scroll, but there’s nothing else but dirt in the room.” She, too, kept her voice low.

“Your wizard dude did say they hadn’t shown themselves to anyone but him before,” Neel added—at normal volume—as he joined them in the doorway. Trisha heard another faint squeak from the Junimo, and it bounced higher, disappearing into dust motes.

“Great, Neel, you scared it off,” she said.

“Sorry.”

Brandy was eyeing the scroll. “Is there anything else in the room we’re not seeing, Trisha? Or do you think it’s safe to go take a closer look at the scroll?”

Trisha double-checked that her phone was still recording and stepped into the room. She could check the video later to see if the Junimo showed up. “Nope, nothing else here.” She crouched down by the paper, which looked unchanged, still a mish-mash of wavering symbols, as the others joined her.

“Uh, wow, that is headache-inducing,” Neel said, looking away after a moment. “You’re sure that’s paper, and not a screen embedded in the floor? Writing’s not supposed to move.”

It certainly _looked_ like paper to her, but she hadn’t thought to check, and she reached toward the edge. Her fingertips felt the texture of fancy paper, but the moment she touched the scroll it expanded to fill her vision, the dilapidated room replaced with an endless field of creamy white. Tendrils of gold began to appear, swirling from tiny points into intricate renderings of trees and flowers, until she stood in a gold-and-white forest.

Scattered on the ground around her were a few splashes of color, oddly solid against the backdrop of gold lines. The one in front of her was a lively green that whispered of new spring growth; it drew nearer as she looked at it, resolving into an empty sack of some sort, the fabric shimmering like a heat mirage as it opened out into a flat circle on the ground. New images began to appear, a quartet of plants she recognized from her library research on what grew wild in the region.

Distantly, she could hear her friends calling her name, and was aware that she still crouched in the middle of a dirt-encrusted room in an abandoned building. “Horseradish, daffodil, leek, and dandelion,” she murmured, and the sound of her own voice snapped her out of whatever trance she had fallen into, the bright forest vanishing into darkness. As her eyes readjusted, something moved in front of her face, close enough that she flinched back before realizing it had been Brandy’s hand, waving.

“Are you back with us?” the other woman asked. “You checked out for a bit, just like with the potion. You’re not going to barf again, are you?”

“No, I’m fine. That was… really strange, though.” There had been something oddly familiar about the “forest” she had seen, but it wasn’t at all like what she had experienced in the wizard’s tower.

“You named a bunch of plants,” Neel said. “What was that about?”

“Rasmodius said the Junimos would help me in exchange for ‘gifts of the valley,’” she said. “I think that was part of what they want.”

“Help you with what, though?” Brandy asked. “Hey, daffodils were on that list, weren’t they?” She turned to Neel.

He looked down at the flowers he still held in one hand. “I’d like to know the answer to Brandy’s question, first. What are they going to help _with_? There are a lot of stories about bargains with spirits that don’t end well.”

“I don’t think they mean any harm,” Trisha said. “But… I’m not sure what they’re offering, either. Could I have one of those? Maybe giving them a little part of what they want might reveal more.”

He separated out one of the flowers and handed it over with a reluctance that probably had nothing to do with the price they could get for it at Pierre’s.

She laid it on top of the scroll, but there was no change to either the flower or the wavering characters on the paper. “Maybe we have to leave it behind?” Neel suggested. “You said we scared off the Junimo you saw in here at first, right?”

Trisha frowned; it was a logical suggestion, but it didn’t sound right to her. She thought back to what she had “seen” in the scroll. “Let me try something else.” She laid her fingertips across the stem of the daffodil so that she was touching both it and the scroll. Nothing happened at first, but as she tried to build a mental image of what she had seen before, the gold decorations on the edge of the scroll shimmered and expanded once more into a translucent vision of the peculiar forest. She could still feel the stem of the flower in her hand, and she looked down to see herself holding it. She focused on the green fabric until it unfolded again, then set the daffodil atop its picture.

“Holy shit!” Startled by Brandy’s exclamation, Trisha jerked her hand back from the scroll. The gold-and-white trees coiled in on themselves, shrunk into tiny points of light before vanishing—

—as did the flower on the floor in front of her.

The three of them stared at the spot it had occupied, and she wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Neel cleared his throat, breaking the silence. “So… did you get any idea what they wanted with it? Or what they’re giving you in return?”

Brandy stared at him, and Trisha suspected her own expression was just as astonished. “How can you be so calm about this?” Trisha demanded.

A soundless breath of laughter escaped him. “I’ve just got more practice faking it,” he said, and for a moment she saw her own bewilderment reflected in his eyes. “It was weird enough to see the guy in the tower doing what looked like magic, but now one of my best friends is, too?”

“I didn’t—” But she had, hadn’t she? Touching the scroll had dragged her into that uncanny forest the first time, but she had sought it out in order to “give” the daffodil to the Junimos. “Oh.” Belatedly, she remembered her phone, still clutched in her left hand. She stopped the video and backed it up. There was no sign of the creature she had seen when she first looked into the room, though the space it had occupied was clearly visible as her recorded voice tried to point out the orange blob to her friends. After that, it didn't show much besides the edge of her knee by the scroll and, a bit later, the flower, as she crouched on the floor—until the moment the daffodil dissolved into points of light that were drawn into the paper on the ground. “Huh. And that’s all you two saw?”

“I take it there was more going on?” Brandy asked. Trisha described the forest as best she could, and the pink-haired woman shook her head. “You stared off into space for a while, and then the flower vanished.”

Trisha worried her lower lip between her teeth, staring down at her phone. “Well, at least that’s proof it’s not all in my head.”

“That’s for sure,” Brandy said. “But you still don’t know what you’re supposed to get out of all this?”

Trisha studied the scroll; the motion of the strange symbols was still bizarre, but it no longer gave her a headache. “I’m going to take one more look,” she said. “There were a few of those bags, and I only looked at the first one.”

It was easier, this time, to call the forest up out of the scroll, and to maintain her awareness of the real room even as it faded from her sight. Glancing at each of the fabric bundles was enough to bring it in front of her, unfolding to reveal more lists of items; most were wild plants that grew in different seasons, but the purple one held a request for more exotic fare, mushrooms and desert fruits and products derived from tree saps. She named each item aloud, describing the ones she wasn’t sure the names of—and hoped her friends would think to write or record them, since she hadn’t restarted the video on her phone, since this was a lot of information to rely on Neel’s memory alone. The last bundle, a shimmering red, asked for an astonishing load of construction materials; it was going to be a pain to haul all of that up here, not to mention collecting it in the first place. “What in the world do you need all of this for?” she asked, gazing around at the deserted golden woodland.

The trees spun dizzily around her, the lines uncoiling and reshaping themselves. The white background faded, as well, and the gold lines danced across the walls of the musty room, forming furniture and other objects. “Oh! This was an arts and crafts room,” she said, looking around at the pots of paint and piles of other supplies. The bags with the lists hung along the walls, and she had a faint impression of a cavity behind the nearest, but before she could try to find out more, the gold lines spun around her again, this time forming into a dizzying image of a deep ravine—

She yanked herself out of the vision with an undignified yelp, because she had been high above the chasm and the bridge that spanned it, and despite knowing she was safely on the floor it had felt like she might tumble into it at any moment.

Brandy grabbed her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said, though her heart was still racing. “Just startled.” She described what she had seen.

“That sounds like the one up in the mountains,” Brandy said. “Except the bridge there is a wreck—I wouldn’t even trust the support pillars on the near side not to crumble under a hard rain.”

Trisha considered. “Maybe they can fix it? That might explain why they want all that wood and stone, when that’s so different from everything else they’re asking for.”

“Hmm. There didn’t look to be very much over there, just an old rock quarry and a couple of caves,” Brandy said.

“Could be something important in the caves,” Neel said.

“Or something dangerous. What if the bridge was taken down because of those snot monsters, or something worse?”

“Why don’t we go to the library and see if we can find out?” Trisha suggested. “Something as big as a bridge collapsing has to have been reported in the local newspaper. Then maybe we can look for the rest of the spring plants.” She thought that filling one of the bundles could have a reward of its own, though she had no idea what it might be, so she didn’t mention it to the others. The herbs and flowers were such a small request that the result—good or bad—couldn’t be that significant, and the nature of it might give her a hint about the rest.

They emerged from the community center to find that the rain had not let up, but a few of the villagers had decided to brave the weather. A red-haired woman bundled up in a bright yellow raincoat held a matching umbrella over her head as she supervised the a pair of children who were splashing enthusiastically through the puddles around the nearby playground equipment. She turned around, her eyes widening in surprise as she saw the three of them. “Oh, hello, Brandy! I didn’t expect to find anyone else out here.” She smiled shyly at the others. “These are your roommates?”

“Yup! Trisha, Neel, this is Penny. She’s the town teacher.”

The woman shook her head, her cheeks reddening. “Not really. I don’t have a degree or anything, but since Pelican Town’s not big enough for its own school, I’m tutoring Vincent and Jas. It’s homeschooling, basically, but I’m doing my best to make sure they’re prepared when they’re old enough to take the bus to the district middle school.” The little girl—Jas, Trisha assumed—left off whatever game she and Vincent had been playing and came up behind Penny, half-hiding behind her skirt. “Jas is very good at math and reading,” she said, smiling fondly at the child. “And Vincent… well, he has an active imagination. He’s so creative! Say hello, Jas—these are the new farmers your Aunt Marnie told you about.”

“Hi…” Jas whispered, then ducked her face behind her tutor.

“She’s a little shy,” Penny apologized. Her gaze fell on Trisha, who still had the key to the community center dangling from her hand. “What in the world were you doing in that old building, anyway? Isn’t it dangerous?”

“The mayor asked if we wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on the place,” she said, turning around to lock up behind her. “He was worried that rats or other pests might settle in and become a nuisance to the town.”

“Rats are cute,” a small voice piped; Jas was peeking out at them. “You didn’t hurt them, did you?”

To Trisha’s surprise, it was Neel who responded, crouching down so he was on eye level with the child. “ _Pet_ rats are really cute,” he agreed. “Wild ones can be mean, because they’re scared of humans. And since they don’t have owners to take them to the vet, they can get sick easily, and spread germs to people living around them. But there weren’t any rats in there at all, so you don’t need to worry.”

“…Okay,” Jas said. “Those are pretty flowers.”

Neel separated one from the bunch he still held. “Would you like one?”

A smile brightened her face. “I love presents! Thank you!” She clutched the daffodil to her chest.

“Ooh, can I have one?” The little boy ran up to them. “Please?” he added, when Penny cleared her throat.

“Sure.” Neel said, handing over another flower.

“You won’t be able to take that home with you, Vincent,” Penny said gently.

“Yeah, I know. They make my mom and brother sneeze,” he confided to the newcomers. “I’ll give it to you when it’s time to go, Miss Penny!”

“Aw, that’s sweet of you,” she said, but the child was already dashing off, dragging his playmate along with him. She smiled and shook her head. “They’re going to wind up using them as swords or magic wands or something like that—I doubt I’ll be taking home much more than a stem. They’re a handful, but it’s nice to make a difference in someone’s life.”

They chatted for a few more minutes before the tutor had to rush over to the fountain in the middle of the park to coax Vincent out of climbing on the rain-slick marble, and while Trisha had liked the woman, she couldn’t deny it was a relief to be on their way at last. “Do you want to drop those off at Pierre’s?” she asked, pointing at the remnants of the flowers Neel had gathered.

He held up the two remaining blooms. “At this point they’re probably better put to use as gifts,” he said. “Do you know which family Vincent belongs to? I don’t want to hand someone an allergen…”

“He’s Sam’s little brother,” Brandy told him. “Ooh, give me one of those!” She snagged a flower before Neel could object and strode across the town square. Trisha caught up with her in time to hear a pretty woman with thick glasses offer a bemused “Thanks?” for the unexpected present. “Hmm. Not sure Maru liked it,” Brandy said as they resumed their trek to the library.

“Well, it didn’t seem like she _disliked_ it, either,” Trisha said, and then she squinted through the rain. There was someone on the bridge ahead of them. Was it—

Neel shoved the last daffodil into her hand as Brandy called, “Hi, Elliott!”

**Author's Note:**

> This work uses the game's calendar rather than converting it to a real-world one; the year really is only 112 days long. Plant and animal growth rates are also as they are in the game, but people don't age 3x as fast as in our world, so when ages and past events are mentioned, the number of years will seem very high. For reference, the three farmers are in their 70s, which is the real-world equivalent of mid-20s.


End file.
